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SCOTLAND AND THE SCOTCH. 



SCOTLAND AND THE SCOTCH 



STIjc Witutttn itivtuit 



By CATHERINE SINCLAIR, 

Author of " Modem Accomplishments," "Modern Society," "Hill and Vdl- 
ley," "Charlie Seymour," "Holiday House," &c. &c. 



Brave world, that has such people in it ! 

Shakspeare. 



DEDICATED TO THE HIGHLAND SOCIETV. 



N E W ■ y O R K : 

D. APPLETON & CO., 200 BROADWAY, 

1840. 



m 



UNIVERSITY PRESS. 
JOHN F. TROW, PRINTER, 114 NASSAU STREET. 



s^r'^ 



PREFACE. 



Studious we toil, correct, amend, retouch, 
Take much away, yet mostly leave too much. 

It may probably be considered a some- 
what presumptuous hope for the author 
to imagine she might add any interest to 
what is already familiarly known respect- 
ing past and present times in Scotland ; 
and certainly if the many who could suc- 
ceed in this attempt better, had under- 
taken the pleasing task at all, she might 
have entirely refrained from adding her 
mite to the general fund of entertainment 
on those interesting topics. The mine is 
abundant, and requires only to be worked, 
but strangers about to explore the north- 
ern regions, vainly inquire for any recent 
work, to act as a clue in conducting them 
througli the labyrinth of our Highland 
hills and glens, affording the general in- 



VI 



PREFACE. 



formation, and local anecdotes, which add 
life and animation to that beautiful scene- 
ry. While the press abounds with inter- 
esting pages, describing the present state 
of the Pawnees, Zoolus, Red Indians, 
Thugs, London pick-pockets. New Zeal- 
anders, and other barbarians, hardly one 
stray journal has ventured forth, these 
many years, respecting the almost un- 
known tribes of Caledonia. 

An excursion in Scotland w^ants the 
novelty and adventure of savage life ; 
neither can it boast of anything to com- 
pare with the gorgeous paraphernalia of 
a continental tour. The traveller must 
here dispense with carnivals, operas, cath- 
edrals, restaurateurs, brigands, improvisa- 
tor!, arch-dukes, and ex-kings; nor can he 
fall into raptures about the Venu^ dc 
Medici, or the climate, but to compensate 
for these lamentable deficiencies, we 
have in the Highlands old traditions, sec- 
ond sight, bagpipes, witchcraft, clans, 
tartan, whiskey, heather, muir-fowl, red-, 
deer, and Jacobites ! 



PREFACE. Vll 

Should a single travelling carriage al- 
ter its course this year from Calais to the 
north, and trace out any part of this tour 
as it is described, with half the pleasure 
such an excursion is capable of exciting, 
the highest ambition of this volume would 
be attained, and the information afforded 
along: the road will at least be found ac- 
curate. The author's chief perplexity 
has arisen from being too intimately ac- 
quainted with the country, as she finds 
great difficulty in compressing this work 
within portable compass, and she has also 
been deeply solicitous, not in a single in- 
stance to infringe the sacred privacy of 
society, nor the confidence of domestic 
life ; therefore her pages resemble the 
catalogue of a picture exhibition — where 
landscapes only appear, they are describ- 
ed at full length, and historical scenes are 
drawn without disguise, but when an in- 
dividual is accidentally introduced, he al- 
ways preserves a strict incognito, being 
mentioned as the " Portrait of a gentle- 
man," or " Likeness of an officer in uni- 



VUl PREFACE. 

form," or " Sketch of a chieftain in High- 
land costume." 

The author wishes the pen may fall 
from her hand, before she writes a page 
not devoted to sound religion and strict 
propriety, or which can injure either the 
dead or the living. She believes, however, 
it must be conceded by every candid read- 
er, that while occupying her own leisure, 
and endeavouring to beguile that of oth- 
ers, in sketching these recollections of 
Scotland's present beauty, and of Scot- 
land's former greatness, she has recorded 

" Not one line that, dying, I would wish to blot." 



SCOTLAND AND THE SCOTCH. 



ROTHESAY. 



TO A SCOTCH COUSIN. 

Where smiling Spring its earliest visit paid, 
And parting Summer's lingering blooms delay'd. 

Goldsmith, 

My dear Cousin, — It is said that, in most 
English schools, the pupils are obliged, during 
dinner, to devour a large portion of pudding, 
mere heavy, tasteless dough, before being per- 
mitted to partake of more palatable food; and 
on a somewhat similar plan, of beginning by a 
surfeit, it appears to me, that travellers generally 
treat their readers with dull tedious apologies 
for writing at all, followed by a wearisome voyage, 
in which all the loathsome sufferings of sea-sickness 
are elaborately described. We used to wish formerly 
that a Professor of Good Advice could be appointed 
2 



10 



ROTHESAY. 



at the university, and I hope one of the fost hints in 
his lectures will be, to make as short a preamble as 
possible, before endeavouring to amuse those who are 
amuseable, and to please those who are obligingly 
disposed to be pleased ; therefore, in accordance 
with his supposed recommendation, I hereby omit the 
six pages of dreary dulness with which my letter 
ought to commence. 

The world is shrinking into a mere nut-shell now, 
since places that seemed formerly at the world's end, 
are of late become attainable in a few hours. Ameri- 
ca only twelve days off! London so near, that the 
sealing-wax on our letters from thence has scarcely 
time to cool before we get them ; and even the beau- 
tiful island of Bute, which we reckoned once upon a 
time as far off as Malta is now, appears to have float- 
ed so much nearer to the metropolis, that in one single 
day we have made a flight from Edinburgh to Rothe- 
say. Whether in a balloon or otherwise it matters 
not, we found ourselves safely landed on this charm- 
ing spot, the Montpellier of Scotland, where con- 
sumptive patients, unable to endure any other air, 
find it possible to breathe with comfort, and where 
we felt the soft, balmy western breeze coming to 
meet us from the mouth of Rothesay bay. I really 
grudged that it should be wasted on us, when so 
many lingering invalids are longing for its almost 
magical influence on their wasted lungs. I shall 



ROTHESAY. 11 

never forget the fervour with which a sick young 
friend of my own once exclaimed, when suffering 
severely from the high, sharp, arrow-like winds of 
Edinburgh, " Oh ! what would I not give for one 
single gasp of Rothesay air !" Brummel used to say 
he was ashamed of the weather in London, but here 
I am really proud of it, as you will begin to suspect, 
if I write about nothing else. 

Rothesay bay is studded round wdth villas, of 
which there are not fewer than forty on the east end, 
looking like a one-sided street, its ranks are so regu- 
lar, while to the west they fall into disorder, some 
houses being mounted high up the hill, keeping a 
look-out across the water, and apparently determined 
not to be overlooked in the world, while others lie 
snug and low on the beach. The architecture is in 
different styles of ugliness, but all as frightful as stone 
and lime can make them ; luckily, however, for 
their inhabitants, it is the inside of a house, and not 
the outside, on which comfort depends, consequently 
invalids must forget Rickman or Hunt on picturesque 
cottages, and be satisfied to recover under steep- 
slated roofs and chimneys, with no other ornament 
than a column of smoke. 

In this little marine city, which is like Venus ris- 
ing out of the sea, nothing surprised me more than to 
find neither baths nor bathing-machines ! Rothesay 
has no right to call itself a sea-bathing quarter ! 



12 ROTHESAY. 

Never was salt water so thrown away on any place ! 
The little crisp, clear, crystal waves curl up on the 
beach most invitingly, sparkling and dancing in the 
sun, but when you ask, " Where are the machines ?" 
echo answers, " Where ?" No facility is afforded 
for enjoying what the Americans call " this privilege 
of water," either hot or cold, and the shore all 
round the bay seems as public as the Serpentine in 
London ; therefore the inhabitants must dip into the 
ocean as you dip into a novel, merely giving it a 
" supercilious glance." One very enterprising talk- 
er has talked for some years of trying, as a specula- 
tion, to establish baths here, on a scale worthy of 
Constantinople or Cheltenham, but his good inten- 
tions have ebbed and flowed so long, that I fear the 
sea will cease to be salt before he finally makes up 
his mind. 

You could not easily find a pleasanter inn than 
this, which is exceedingly well kept by a Devon- 
shire landlady, Mrs. M'Corkindale, who finds the 
climate so like that of her native land, she may not 
probably have yet discovered the change of lati- 
tude. From her windows, however, we have a 
scene not to be matched among the flat, smooth, 
well-rolled surface of a more southern landscape. 
The deep, intensely blue ocean is here framed in a 
circle of noble, solemn looking mountains, among 
which you would admire that curious musemn of 



ROTHESAY. 13 

hills with rough ragged tops, jocularly named " Ar- 
gyle's bowling green ;" and far off on the opposite 
coast stands the ruined old castle of Toward, which 
once had the honour of Queen Mary's company at 
dinner ; and also conspicuously placed, is its lineal 
descendant, that handsome new mansion, looking 
like the king of all the villas, recently built by Mr. 
Kirkman Finlay, a stately, well-grown edifice, sur- 
rounded by a young colony of trees, tastefully 
sprinkled all over the pleasure grounds, which look 
so low and insignificant, that the place might be 
veiy appropriately called " Bushy Park." A large 
chui'ch has been erected near, but I observed no vil- 
lage likely to furnish an adequate congregation, 
though certainly it is beyond all ordinary calculation, 
the distance from which Highlanders will assem- 
ble in the house of prayer, and thanlrfully give as 
much labour to reap the bread of life on Sunday, as 
to earn their daily food during the week. 

This evening we strolled out to see the small re- 
mains of Rothesay Castle, an ugly old thing, but 
respectably clothed with ivy ; and it has a few in- 
teresting adventures to relate of former days, though 
none now remember its early grandeur, or mourn 
over its decay. These desolate and deserted walls, 
amidst the storms and trials of the world, were buf- 
feted once by tempests, enlivened by sunshine, 
2* 



14 ROTHESAY. 

clouded by sorrow, and echoing with laughter, but 
its tenants are all vanished, — 

'• the guid, the great, 
And naething now remains, 
But ruin sittin' on thy wa's, 

And crumblin' down the stanes." 

Here Robert the Third died of a broken heart, 
on account of his son, James the First, having been 
captured. Here Oliver Cromwell's troops came like 
a devastating flood upon the country, sweeping 
away all they could take or destroy — here the Earl 
of Argyle's brother, in 1685, set fire to the castle, 
burning all that could be burned within it — and here 
an ash tree, recently contrived to grow on the sum- 
mit of a stone arch, till the trunk attained to a cir- 
cumference of nine feet, when it fell to the ground, 
and after so long setting an example of frugality in 
living without nourishment, it became a means of 
over-feeding others, having been cut into a dining- 
table for George the Fourth. 

Within the Castle we admired a fine old thorn, 
six feet in circumference, and forty-five feet high, 
which fell prostrate on the ground last November, 
but still puts out a mass of leaves, as if the roots 
yet had nourishment from the ground instead of the 
empty air in which they are up-raised, preserving its 
foliage " green and fresh without, but worn and 



ROTHESAY. 15 

bare within." Though no one usually likes to have 
a thorn in his side, this old fortress looks much the 
better of its gay leaves and blossoms. During sum- 
mer, divine service is occasionally performed within 
those roofless walls, where a numerous congrega- 
tion assembles. The dissenters must be rapidly in- 
creasing at Rothesay, as their chapel was lately sold 
to the Episcopalians, after wliich they erected an- 
other three times as large. It is curious to observe, 
how precisely the architecture of churches may be 
considered characteristic of their doctrines and mode 
of worship — the Roman Catholic edifices being gen- 
erally all ornament and frippery, the established 
churches of England and Scotland less adorned, and 
the dissenters' chapels are every where like large 
chests, with a flat lid on the top. 

Our cicerone through these ruins was no less a 
personage than the jailer of Rothesay, not at all 
resemblino; the romantic beau-ideal of sternness and 
severity usually ascribed in fiction to those important 
officials, but more like the philanthropist Howard 
himself. He led us with much professional zeal, to 
inspect the remnant of a dark dungeon, formerly 
used for confining criminals, measuring only ten feet 
by fifteen, a dismal hole, with only an aperture above, 
not the semblance of a window, and containing a 
crevice in the roof, which served as a door, but was 
so narrow, that captives must all have been starved 



16 MOUNT STEWART. 

for some time, till they were thin enough to get in, 
and afterwards kept on spare diet if they were ever 
intended to come forth again. Here om* friend the 
jailer expatiated very fully on the superior advan- 
tages enjoyed under his jurisdiction ; and, certainly, 
that necessary evil, the county jail, which we saw, 
looks like Cardiff Castle, or any other nobleman's 
residence. No wonder that, when his guests have 
once conquered their natural horror of disgrace, they 
frequently return to the jailer's careful guardianship, 
where those poor creatures, who knew not formerly 
where to gain a dinner, are here at once transported 
into a comfortable hotel, where they meet with kind 
treatment, fires in every room, excellent sleeping 
accommodation, regular hours, plenty of food, and 
nothing to pay. Some of the old women consider 
it a perfect home, and would feel more alarmed at 
the threat of being turned out, than of being shut in. 
Next morning we had an anxious debate 
whether to hasten westward, or to remain for 
a peep at Mount Stewart ; but, after hearing 
counsel on both sides, the weather decided the ques- 
tion, by looking hopelessly gloomy ; therefore it 
seemed more suitable for land than for water. Re- 
solved, That, not being obliged to go 1000 miles in 
1000 hours, we could spare time to see Lord Bute's 
charming residence on this island, which is quite a 
celebrated beauty, and having ascertained from our 



MOUNT STEWART. 17 

host that the distance was only foui" miles, an inn- 
keeper's mile being always shorter than any other 
person's, we settled, after a truly Scotch breakfast 
of fish, flesh, and fowl, to walk the whole way. 

It was a morning quite on purpose for the enter- 
prise, with neither dust nor sunshine to render it fa- 
tiguing; and, after crossing a short succession of 
hills, in some parts as bare and broM'n as roasted 
chestnuts, we were agreeably surprised to see the 
gate close to the sea-beach, and flanked by a very 
pretty, prosperous looking \'illage, tastefully festoon- 
ed in all directions with fishing-nets, and with 
graceful lines of salted haddocks and whitings bask- 
ing in the sun. 

When advancing up the long and beautiful ap- 
proach to Mount Stewart, where the trees were 
neither few nor far between, and their branches 

tossing in the air like the arms of Mr. when 

he makes a speech, nothing in Australia could have 
looked more solitary. Not a mouse was stirring, 
nor a living creatm'e visible, to disturb the deep si- 
lence aroimd ; but, for natural beauty, it was unpos- 
sible sufficiently to admire the prodigious arbutusses 
and laurels, the superb evergreen oaks, the long 
straight colonades of trees, the sparkling sea, the 
green isles of Cmnbra, and the bold wooded shores 
of Ayrshire, twelve miles distant. From thence the 
church bells at Largs are distinctly heard chiming 



18 MOUNT STEWART. 

on Sunday, in pleasing unison wdth the loud dash of 
the ocean, while the wind blows a sort of trumpet 
accompaniment through the waving forests; and 
this, with the warbling of some hundred birds, must 
make a charming natural orchestra, which might 
find a ready echo in every heart. 

We leisurely circumnavigated the house of 
Mount Stewart, which is ostensibly protected by a 
park of artillery, ten real live cannons, ready for 
duty, bristling along the front ; but, in spite of this 
formidable defence, I shall venture to hint, that the 
external aspect is very like that of a dilapidated bar- 
rack, greatly requiring a few touches of the trowel 
from some skilful architect, to metamorphose the 
veiy plain front into a more tasteful exterior. The 
only ornaments of this edifice appeared on the lead- 
en water-pipes, which are each decorated with eight 
coronets, reminding us of the gouty old peer in 
" Marriage a la Mode," who put a coronet on his 
crutch. 

The entrance-hall at Mount Stewart is con- 
verted into a dining-room, and the door into a glass 
window, over the outside of which is carved, in stone 
characters, this inscription, written by Prince Charles 
when in concealement on the island of Bute : 

" Henceforth this Isle to the afflicted be 
A place of refuge, as it was to me ; 
The promises of blooming spring live here, 
And all the blessings of the ripening year." 



MOUNT STEWART. 19 

How much these hnes might have gained in interest, 
if the royal fugitive had only added any allusion to 
his being a Christian ! In the Swiss and German 
cottages, a text or a sentiment is very frequently en- 
graved over the entrance, intimating the faith of 
their inmates ; and it was a good old custom in our 
own country, thus to signify the belief and hope 
reigning within their walls, a magnificent specimen 
of which may be seen at Temple Newsome in York- 
shire, where a battlement surrounds the lofty roof, 
composed of capital letters, more than two feet long, 
standing up in full relief against the sky. I walked 
round the towering walls to decipher this code of 
moral and religious duty, which has stood so many 
centiu-ies, reminding the noble proprietors of that 
holy religion in which their fathers lived and died : 
" All Glory aisji) Praise Be Given To God the 
Father, The Son and Holy Ghost, on High. 
Peace upon Earth. Good Well Towards Men. 
Honour and True Allegiance to our Gracious 
King. Loving Affections amongst His Subjects. 
Health and Plenty Within This House." 

Near the door at Mount Stewart, a good- 
humoured watch-dog issued from its kennel, on the 
preventive service, but, except his rattling chain, 
there was nothing formidable about him. It was 
otherwise in respect to a large bird, ten times more 
ferocious, which strutted at large before the windows. 



20 MOUNT STEWART. 

magnificently dressed in black plumage and a red 
bill. This American pheasant made a formidable 
assault upon some visiters lately ; but, heedless of 
danger, we courageously rang the bell and inquired 
if the pictures were at home, which most fortunately 
they were, and we obtained an immediate introduc- 
tion to an interesting series of family portraits, stand- 
ing in regular rotation, from the grim, grisly knights 
of ancient days, to the sleek smiling courtiers of 
more recent years. 

Nothing in the way of sight-seeing interests me 
half so much, as to go Paul-Prying among the very 
rooms that have been inhabited by celebrated per- 
sons, and to see their almost living representations, 
which they sat for themselves, and approved of, 
each beholding as in a glass the reflection of his own 
features, which now seemed to gaze upon us from the 
walls like sileait ghosts of the departed, exhibiting 
the very dress and attitude in which they formerly 
sat on those chairs where we sat, or gazed on the 
surrounding landscape which we were achniring. 
This is history and romance embodied at once before 
our eyes, and fills the mind with more of thought 
and reflection than even imaginary or allegorical 
painting, which is the poetry of that noble art, and 
affords pleasure of a totally different kind, peculiarly 
to be enjoyed when it raises elevated or devotional 
feelings, such as the paintings of Raphael, who con- 



MOUNT STEWART. 21 

secrated his pencil successfully to sacred objects, de- 
claring, that as he had not been born with the elo- 
quence of writing or speaking, he would " paint to 
the glory of God." 

We now stood in a fine cheerful room, completely 
panelled round with the full-length portraits of cele- 
brated personages, each of whom had his eyes sol- 
emnly fixed upon us, as if he were asking what we 
thought of his appearance and character. As we 
sauntered along the apartments, every individual had 
some story or anecdote connected with his name, 
which had already made me have a sort of imaginary' 
sketch of him in my mind's-eye. The Duchess of 
Lauderdale appeared first, looking as disagreeable and 
un ami able as she really was; and that scourge of 
Scotland, her husband, was, to use a favourite expres- 
sion of young ladies in the present day, " a perfect hor- 
ror!" A curious proof of their pride may be seen at 
their splendid residence, Ham House, where the long 
receiving-room has a raised enclosure at the farthest 
end, calculated only to hold state chairs for their Gra- 
ces. The grasping and ambitious Duchess had a 
blemished reputation, and was even suspected of 
having acquired her widow's weeds by the revolting 
crime of poisoning the Duke, to whom, before mar- 
riage, she had been only too partial. I have been 
told that a gossiping chronicler of that period insinu- 
ates as much, saying, " age and discontent were the 
3 



22 MOUNT STEWART- 

chief ingredients of his Grace's death, if the Duchess 
and her physician were free from it ; she had got all 
from him she could expect, and w^as glad to be quit 
of him." The fashion, of late so universal in India, 
of a widow burning herself with the body of her hus- 
band, was first introduced by the men, because in any 
matrimonial fracas, the ladies were so apt to divorce 
themselves, by putting a summary period to the ex- 
istence of their better half. What affectionate soli- 
citude married people would feel for each other, if 
we established the law mentioned by Sinbad the 
Sailor, that even death itself was not to separate a 
happy or unhappy couple, but they were invariably 
to be buried together. 

The Prime Minister, Lord Bute, appeared next, 
so like George the Third, that they might have per- 
sonated each other. He was a patriotic benefactor 
to Scotland, and among many other improvements, 
established the Botanical Garden in Edinburgh, and 
wrote, after his retirement from office, a work on 
British plants, in nine quarto volumes, of which he 
allowed only sixteen copies to be printed, though the 
copper-plates cost ,£1000. Those book-mongers 
who estimate works by their scarcity, would be fran- 
tic to obtain one of these rare editions, which should 
be paid for with nothing more common than a Queen 
Anne's farthing, or the shilling in Queen Elizabeth's 
time, of which only one was ever allowed to be 



MOUNT STEWART. 23 

issued, because the stamp too faithfully represented 
her Majesty's wrinkles. The Prime Minister's son 
was so handsome and so silent, that when sent as 
Ambassador to Spain, an ill-natured wit of the day 
said he would do athnirably at a couit where there 
was Uttle to say and nothing to do. 

We admired much Henrietta, Duchess of Orleans, 
the beautiful daughter of Charles the First, a grand 
majestic looking personage, with fine coimnanding 
features, who shared the fatal destiny of her unfortu- 
nate family, few or none of whom died in a regular 
way, but were all hurried out of the world by some 
cruel treachery or mischance. She was suspected 
to have been poisoned by her own husband in a fit 
of jealousy, but as the accusation was not entirely 
proved, a verdict might then have been given, like 
that of the Irish jury in a more recent case, " Not 
guilt}', — but he had better not do it again." 

In the dining-room at Mount Stewart hangs a 
portrait of Rubens, painted by himself, but artists on 
such occasions have it all their own w^ay, and gen- 
erally make themselves each a perfect Adonis on 
canvass, perhaps what they wish to be, rather than 
what they are. We also saw a portrait, the perpe- 
trator of which was certainly not given to flatteiy, 
exhibiting the countenance of Lady Jane Douglas, 
so well known to the Com-t of Session. She is 
dressed in a magnificent riding-habit of blue and 



24 MOUNT STEWAKT. 

gold, like an admiral's uniform, which would have 
astonished a Stultz, and electrified the tournament 
itself! The great law-suit of which Lady Jane was 
at all events the mother, had a curious effect on the 
society of Lanarkshire, where the two families of 
Hamilton and Douglas became naturally at enmity, 
and in the public meetings, each party stood at 
opposite ends of the room, surrounded by their re- 
spective friends, and watching with jealousy the 
least suspicion of attention to their adversaries. 

We were much entertained with a droll animated 
picture of the great Lord Bute's three eldest daugh- 
ters, all pretty, playing at romps in a garden, and 
equipped for the occasion in rich satin dresses, lace 
aprons, sleeves a la Carsan, and bodies to their 
frocks, apparently tighter than any stays. This has 
narrowly escaped being a good picture, and was the 
more interesting, as all these three Graces made 
very illustrious marriages. One became Countess 
of Percy, who, after fifteen years' unhappiness, had 
her marriage annulled ; another Countess of Lons- 
dale, and the third Countess of Macartney, wife of 
the Ambassador to China. Not one of these three 
sisters had children. 

The second lady's husband succeeded a distant 
cousin, and got the estate without the title, but hav- 
ing the command of several votes in the House of 
Commons, applied to " the elder Pliny, Lord Chat- 



MOUNT STEWART. 25 

ham," that the family honoms might be continu- 
ed to himself, and, on being refused, merely an- 
swered in a threatening tone, " We are seven." 
This argument produced the desired effect at that 
time, and in the present day it would have got him 
a dukedom. 

We were perfectly captivated by Kneller's por- 
trait of the beautiful, witty, but cold-hearted and un- 
amiable Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. It is love- 
liness personified, with an earnest, intense expres- 
sion of countenance like life itself. No wonder 
that Pope lost his wits, great as they were, at the 
sight of that coimtenance, animated with humour, 
intellect, grace, and vivacity, when the mere lifeless 
representation is so beyond a poet's dream. Her 
hair is impowdered, and so carelessly dressed, she 
seems to have passed her fingers through it only a 
minute before. No ornament disfigures her simple 
attire of rich white satin, and she carries in her hand 
a book w^ith golden clasps, very like a Bible, though 
the probability is rather against its having been one, 
unless merely carried for effect, like those you have 
seen used by ladies of fashion in London, set with 
clasps of turquoises and gold, as ornamental appen- 
dages to a dressing table. 

Where files of pins extend iheir shining rows. 
Rouge, ringlets, patches, Bibles, billet-doux. 

3* 



26 MOUNT STEWART. 

In the dining-room hangs a beautiful mirror, 
presented by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu to her 
daughter, Lady Bute, quite an old historical piece of 
furniture, which is perfectly unique, the surface be- 
ing painted nearly all over with wreaths of roses 
and lilies, so that the glass only appears in patches, 
as if real flowers were strewed upon water. Lady 
Mary's grand-daughter. Lady Macartney, seems to 
have inherited none of her beauty, but she may very 
well have been more amiable. The attitude of her 
picture is uncommon, as she appears in a white 
muslin dressing-gown, and with a black ribbon 
drawn so tightly round her throat, that it choked 
me to look at her. She has her finger inserted, 
wdth an evident desire to loosen this uncomfortable 
bow-string, which the Thug himself need scarcely 
have tightened. It reminded us of the poor man in 
Yorkshire, who some years ago had epileptic fits; 
and his widow told a friend, "her husband could 
not die, poor man, though he struggled so frightfully, 
till at last she took a clean piece of tape, and twitch- 
ed it round his neck, when he went off as quiet as a 
lamb." 

A droll, fantastic -looking pictm-e of Lady Maiy 
Menzies served as a curious memorial of fashions 
long since extinct, with her little pink hat whimsi- 
cally perched on one side of her head, a pink velvet 
habit, and such a waist ! a sharp east \\ind would 



MOUNT STEWART. 27 

have cut her in two ! She has a shepherdess's crook 
and a pet lamb beside her ; but if all that is said be 
true, a pack of cards would have been more appro- 
priate, as many acres in Perthshire changed hands 
through her shuffling and dealing. She was sister 
to the Prime Minister, and had no family. 

Ladies long ago exhibited more peculiarities of 
character than now, when the stamp of nature is 
polished off, like a well-worn shilling, and all seem 
exactly alike ; but among those we saw on canvass 
here, none interested my curiosity more than the 
beautiful and eccentric Duchess of Queensberry, who 
had a strange delight in going about incog., like 
Haroun Alarschid, dressed frequently as a dairy- 
maid ; and in this portrait her costume is very little 
above that of a house-maid. A whimsical proof of 
her skill in tormenting was shown w^hen country 
neighboui-s came equipped in their very best dresses 
to visit her Grace. She decoyed them out along 
the dirtiest roads, wearing her own cottage costume, 
and making the whole party sit down occasionally 
on any damp grass or mouldy walls that seemed most 
certain to ruin their finery. No fictitious tragedy 
could be more melancholy than that in which her 
manoeuvres involved the Marquis of Drmnlamig, her 
son, who was engaged to many a a eiy lovely and 
estimable young lady ; but the Duchess contrived to 
intercept their letters, persuaded the disappointed 



28 MOUNT STEWART. 

lover, during a prolonged absence, that Miss Mackay 
had actually married another, and huiried him into 
a union with the lady her Grace preferred. Imme- 
diately afterwards the Marquis met the object of his 
earliest choice, and discovered the cruel deception 
his mother had practised upon him. On a journey 
with his bride, scarcely three months after their 
union, he shot himself, and the widowed Marchio- 
ness did not long survive. No excuse can be plead- 
ed for the Dutchess, unless the report be true that 
she was confined during some part of her youth in 
a strait jacket. Miss Mackay afterwards became 
Mrs. Macleod of Talisher, in Skye ; and an old cler- 
gyman there, in describing her to me, observed, that 
she had become one of the most admirable women 
in her time, " fit not merely to have been a Dutch- 
ess, but an Empress." 

There are two fine gardens at Mount Stewart, 
one for use, and the other for ornament. In the 
kitchen garden, the apricots and turnips seemed to 
promise equally well ; and we discovered one fig 
tree, with about two hundred figs, while others close 
by, with the same advantages, bore nothing but 
leaves, forming an excellent exemplification of the 
text, " by their fruits ye shall know them." It is 
an interesting remark of Bishop Hall's, that our Sa- 
viour, after exhibiting so many miracles of mercy to 
mankind on earth, chose at last to exemplify the 



MOUNT STEWART. 29 

future vengeance of God against sinners, not upon a 
living man, but, with characteristic goodness, he 
cursed only a tree. 

We could not catch a cicerone anywhere, to do 
the honoui-s of the fruit and vegetables, till at last 
a boy of fourteen appeared, smoking his pipe ; and 
he seemed to have smoked away any brains he ever 
had, being most incomparably stupid. I once heard 
a patriotic Scotch gentleman exclaim, when he had 
apphed to several persons in vain for information, 
" These people are as stupid as if they were Eng- 
lish !" but this juvenile smoker knew nothing about 
anything, and would have been disowned in every 
country. He was fit for no better employment than 
to sit imder a gooseberry bush with his pipe, smoking 
the caterpillars to death. The boy was lazily doing 
what I suppose he called work ; but it made me sad 
to see a habit acquired at so early an age, which 
will rob him in after years of health, money, and 
time. I wish King James's " Counterblast against 
Tobacco" were republished! How invariably we 
see, in every village, the little shop-board advertising 
" Tea, snufF, and tobacco," those three ruinous lux- 
ui'ies of the poor, on the more moderate use of which 
it would be well if divines would occasionally both 
write and preach. About ^660,000 is annually re- 
ceived in Aberdeenshire for black cattle, and a sim- 
ilar sum is every year expended in that county on 



30 MOUNT STEWART. 

tobacco and snufF! The very flies must be sneezing 
as they go along ! Few people are aware to what 
a frightful excess the vice of opium eating has ex- 
tended lately in this country, and how rapidly it is 
increasing, both in England and Scotland. I could 
name one apothecary's shop, where innumerable 
small packets, costing only a penny, of this perni- 
cious drug, are prepared every night, and where a 
crowd of the wretched purchasers, many of them 
women, glide silently up to the counter, deposit the 
price, and without uttering a word, steal away like 
criminals, to plunge themselves into a temporary de- 
lirium, followed by those agonies of mind and body 
by which both are at last distorted and ruined. We 
have all read the English Opium-Eater's Confessions, 
who took laudanum toddy after dinner for his re- 
freshment ! The fascinations of this drug are like 
those of the snake, whose victims see their impend- 
ing destruction, and yet cannot resist the fatal im- 
pulse to go on — an affecting instance of which is 
the well-known anecdote of Coleridge entreating that 
his friends would place him in a mad-house as his 
only hope of being cured ; and few are capable of 
a high moral and religious effort, such as that emi- 
nent man successfully made, to rescue himself from 
the destructive propensity, afterwards using those af- 
fecting expressions, " I feel with an intensity un- 
fathomable by words, my utter nothingness, impo- 



MOUNT STEWART. 31 

tence, and worthlessness, in and for myself. I have 
learned what a sin is against an infinite, imperisha- 
ble being, such as is the soul of man. I have had 
more than a glimpse of what is meant by death, and 
outer darkness, and the worm that dieth not ; and 
that all the hell of the reprobate is no more incon- 
sistent with the love of God than the blindness of 
one who ' as occasioned disease to eat out his eyes 
is inconsistent with the light of the sun." 

The flower-garden at Mount Stewart, nearly a 
mile distant from the house, is situated on a verj' 
picturesque, irregular piece of ground, inclining 
towards the sea, and you will think I am copying a 
page out of some fairy tale, when you read a des- 
cription of it. No shop for artificial flowers could 
look more brilliantly gay ; and the richly adorned 
beds of roses and other blooming plants, were each 
like one of Madame Devis's boxes from Paris. A 
gigantic family of native silver firs are ranged in tall 
majestic solemnity around the gay foreigners, which 
form a curious contrast. Exotics scarcely to be 
reared by those who have a green-house elsewhere, 
flourish in this garden, as if they mistook Bute for 
the tropics, and seem to find no difficulty in accom- 
modating themselves to the climate. Cape heaths 
flower luxiu-iantly in the open air, remaining out all 
winter, as w^ell as standard plants of the magnolia 
grancUflora, which have risen to the height of eighteen 



32 MOUNT STEWART. 

or twenty feet. Myrtles blossom here like hawthorn 
trees, sweet almonds ripen, geraniums are on jfire with 
scarlet flowers, fuschias and camellias have been en- 
listed among the hardy plants, and we observed two 
cork trees very thriving, so that the noble proprietor 
might not only have a yearly vintage, but also grow 
his own corks. In short, it seems as if that which 
flowers once a year elsewhere, blossoms twice here, 
and what grows six feet high in other places of the 
empire, grows twelve feet high in this more favoured 
spot. 

The gardener displayed with some exultation an 
Arabian acacia, which had, he said, " wintered out 
the winter ;" likewise Russian cranberries, yielding 
two crops every year, and the American andromeda, 
bearing large white wax or ivoiy bells, and giving 
out a charming aromatic perfume ; but nothing is 
so difficult to describe or remember as a scent, so 
you must try to fancy it. The arbutus is in fruit all 
the year; the American honeysukcle is a superb 
plant, bearing fruit like a cherry, which is, however, a 
deadly poison ; the arbor vitae was covered still -svith 
the withered blossoms of last summer, and the orange 
trees here might have formed a grove w^orthy of 
Seville or Malta. Though they belong to a Tory, 
the oranges are allowed to wear their own Whig 
colour, not being treated like those at a Conservative 
dinner last year, where they w^ere all painted blue ! 



MOUNT STEWART. 33 

It was curious, instead of being ushered into a 
steaming hot-house, where the plants and ourselves 
would have been in a high fever, thus to visit, in the 
fiee open air, representatives from so many soils, 
America, Russia, China, Arabia, Spain, and the 
Cape, all vying in splendour and beauty, and this 
whole garden, containing four acres of charming, 
imdulating ground, is kept in first-rate order by one 
clever, communicative, civil man, who said he laid 
it out himself, during the former Marquis's time, and 
without having ever allowed a single individual to 
assist, has reared every one of these plants ! Such 
a garden would be cheap at any salary, doing the 
work of at least four ordinary men ! His fancy has 
been indulo-ed in some odd devices, and amonor oth- 
ers, the rosaiy is laid out like a wheel, at every 
spoke of which stands a gate, so that it seemed ex- 
actly on the plan of John O'Groat's house, with 
eight entrances. 

In the garden we really had a perfect carnival 
of birds as well as of flowers. It was quite a bird 
concert, and one little songster poured out such a 
flood of harmony, that, if not a nightingale he de- 
served to be one. Neither Pasta nor Rubini have 
a shake to compare with him ! What a saving of 
labour it would be, if we were all born ready taught 
musicians as birds are, instead of ladies being bound 
apprentices to music for nine good years of life, that 
4 



34 MOUNT STEWART. 

they may learn to play perplexing tunes with im- 
possible variations, carefully acquiring " nimble fin- 
gers and vacant understandings." It has been quite 
a calamity to the middle classes, that every farmer's 
daughter nov^ must indispensably learn jingling, for 
it cannot be called music when played on such 
cheap pianos as they can afford, tuned only once 
a year, and sounding at best like a poker and tongs. 
Poor Strauss and Rosini ! I was amused to hear 
lately of a music master, unable to endure indifferent 
scholars, who taught on dumb piano-fortes, and only 
treated his pupils to audible ones when they played 
so as to afford him pleasure, which in some cases 
would be never. I called some years since at a farm- 
house, built, like all its cotemporaries, on a scale out 
of proportion to the rent. There the young " ladies" 
had left their milk-pails to practise the Swiss Ranz 
des Vaches, and played " Corn-riggs," instead of 
cutting them ; but it was an amusing mixture in the 
large empty unfurnished drawing-room, to see a 
piano-forte standing at one end, and a pile of carrots 
and turnips at the other. Our obliging cicerone, the 
gardener at Mount Stewart, was rather ad libitum in 
his pronunciation of names, and when showing us 
a very beautiful peony tree, he remarked that it 
produced every season a great many " fine pianos !" 
Several of the walks at Mount Stewart are quite 
blockaded with trees, so thickly leaved, they might 



MOUNT STEWART. 35 

pass for hay-cocks. Some rise to a very gigantic 
height, and we saw one with fifty feet of clear stem, 
before the branches were set on, and many have 
ingeniously contrived to flourish in a glen where 
they never saw the sun in their lives. In one ave- 
nue, beneath the " pillared shade" of some tall cathe- 
dral-like beeches, there lives a numerous colony of 
herons, whose habits of life are most amusing to 
watch. I have always envied that man in the Ara- 
bian nights, who understood the language of the 
animal world, and certainly they do act with so 
much appearance of unity and design that they must 
have some mode of communication unperceived by us. 

" We need not ask Jean Jacques Rousseau 
If birds confabulate or no!" 

In the forest sanctuaries here, I wished myself a 
botanist ! The grass is a living carpet of wild flowers, 
includins: a whole Flora Britannica of blue bells, or- 
chusses, hyacynths, periwinkles, cowshps, veronicas, 
wood sorrel, wild geraniums, and the gay white 
flower of the wild leek,which sent forth its perfume far 
and wide with a fragrance so disagreeably powerful, 
as to make me w^onder less than formerly at the lady 
who cut off" her husband's thumbs for eating garlic. 
The poor people collect this weed in great quantities 
to flavour their " excellent family broth." 

Our paragon ofgardeners became so zealous about 
parading us over the grounds that he sacrificed his 



36 MOUNT STEWAET. 

dinner in the cause, and very near sacrificed his child 
also. A little helpless dot of a thing accompanied 
us about half the distance, but when a longer pere- 
grination was projected, he desired the poor infant to 
find his own way home, which I sincerely hope he did. 
We walked back towards Rothesay, by a circuit- 
ous path along the sea-shore, and were astonished to 
see a crescent of villas nearly the whole way along, 
in every variety of shape, size, and dimension, but 
all with considerable pretensions to magnificence. 
Lord Alvanley once remarked that the chief wonder 
of Doncaster races was, to see several hundred men 
of j£5000 a-year, whom no one had ever heard of 
before, and, I felt somewhat similarly astonished at 
the affluence of Bute ! If any one wishes to be 
rich, — and some people really do, — let me recom- 
mend him to become a Glasgow architect, as the 
rage for villaing fifty miles west of that city is quite 
incredible, owing to the number of retiring shop- 
keepers, who wish to indulge their rural propensities, 
and, as the old song says, " to sit upon benches and 
sleep upon roses." At Glasgow it is quite a pecu- 
liarity to be poor. The first mansion pointed out 
for our admiration, belonged to a ci-devant dealer 
in snufF and tobacco, who has hit off a house quite 
in the style of a snuff-box, being a low oblong 
square with a flat lid on the top, and a precipitous 
hill which rises behind has been divided by walls 



kean's cottage. 37 

into an appearance exactly resembling the shelves 
of a shop. A retired builder testified his grateful 
attachment to stone and mortar, by enclosing him- 
self within so lofty a wall, that I mistook his villa 
for a mad-house; and a third, belonging to a 
wealthy calico printer, had the walls richly flowered 
with a showy pattern of roses, and the ^^dndows 
fringed with leaves, 

rather fine than neat; 

And guests politely call his house a seat, ♦ 

In the evening we drove three miles through the 
narrow by-ways and almost trackless fields, to visit 
Kean the actor's cottage, beautifully situated on Loch 
Fad, a charming fresh water lake, three miles long, 
as blue and serene as the sky overhead, and sur- 
rounded by noble hills, natural wood, and magnifi- 
cent everoreens. It was a singular freak for a pub- 
lie character, w^ho so long heard the plaudits of 
London ringing in his ears, to bury himself in a sol- 
itude so remote, sequestered, and inaccessible, where 
he was beyond the reach of audiences, clubs, rail- 
roads, steam-boats, or even carriages ; but I suppose 
he felt oppressed with a sense of conspicuousness, 
like a certain authoress, whose biographer describes 
her complaining, that she was " wearied of the glare 
and dust of her own celebrity ! hlasle with faies 
flatteries ! pursued by adulation, and perplexed how 
to bury her fame ! The cottages that look best in 



'38 kean's cottage. 

landscape paintings, and describe charmingly in 
poetry, are not the most enjoyable for living in, 
therefore Kean sacrificed the picturesque for good 
solid brick-and-mortar comfort, not even indulging 
our eyes with a thatched roof, but substituting a 
steep, ugly, substantial canopy of slates, which put 
to flight our most romantic anticipations, while the 
large, square, matter-of-fact windows, gave a last 
finish to its ugliness. 

Over the gate he placed his own marble bust, 
by Thom, surrounding it with the monumental like- 
nesses of those whom he justly considered kindred 
spirits, Garrick, Massinger, and Shakspeare. Like 
the bard of Avon, Kean planted a mulberry tree 
in his garden, which grew and flourished, an object 
of the greatest interest and gratification, till one 
fatal morning, when, from the window of his 
dressing-room, he observed an old man's cow 
devouring the precious plant ! Without waiting to 
complete his toilette, he instantly dashed oflf a letter 
to the factor of the property, complaining vehe- 
mently of this trespass, and offering so exaggerated 
a rent for the field in which this offending animal 
had hitherto pastured, that the original tenant got 
a hint to retire. This hasty transaction, however, 
raised the expense of his pleasure-grounds so ex- 
ceedingly, that his successor did not serve himself 
heir to the little property, which lapsed into Lord 



kean's cottage. 39 

Bute's possession, and is now tenanted by Mr. 
Newman, who mentioned that the whole rent he 
pays is not equal to what Kean gave for that one 
field. The drawing-room walls are decorated with 
a Swiss paper exhibiting theatrical designs for 
tragedies and comedies, warriors fighting, lovers 
loverizing, and all the paraphernalia of stage effect. 
Here Kean sometimes treated his unsophisticated 
neighbours at Rothesay to a few dramatic scenes, 
which in London would have drawn mobs, and 
there attracted as large a crowd as Bute could 
furnish; but, before long, he tired of rural felicity, 
and forsook his hermitage to seek happiness where 
it never can be found, — amidst the noisy plaudits of 
a crowded theatre, and in scenes that his better 
feelings condemned. 

One of the villas which attracts most notice 
near Rothesay at present, is that in which Lady 
Ilintore's serv^ants were so terrified last year, by 
"supernatural noises." They refused at last to 
remain ; but I never saw any house less suited for 
an apparition, as ghosts generally perform their 
parts M-ith suitable scenery and decorations, in some 
old tmnble-down castle, but this is quite an unro- 
mantic, every-day, modern edifice, perfectly unfit 
for the marvellous, yet here, last season, were 
French abigails and London butlers all in a panic, 
magistrates taking depositions, masons pulling down 
the partitions, and every thing, in short, got up. 



40 kean's cottage. 

quite in the Cocklane ghost style, till at length a 
mysterious knocking in the walls proving quite 
incorrigible, the inmates all departed, leaving the 
ghosts to themselves, rent-free. When people once 
become thoroughly wound up to a belief in the 
supernatural, I believe their agonies when alone at 
night are such, that it would be a relief to see even a 
real live robber, with a pistol at your head, threaten- 
ing to shoot you ; and some of the good folks on 
this occasion appear to have been almost in that 
state, though perhaps the servants, wearied of 
living so retired in Bute, knew more about the 
matter than they chose to acknowledge. Another 
house, situated in Aberdeenshire, perplexed the 
inhabitants this year in a similar manner, scarcely 
to be out-done even by the case of Wesley's par- 
sonage at Gainsbro'. The kitchen dresser jerked 
about in a most unearthly manner, the meat bolted 
out of the pans, the plates were unaccountably 
hurled on the floor, and the very bread would not 
lie still in an ordinary business-like way to be eaten, 
but skipped about as if it had been possessed. The 
parish clergyman was actually twice summoned to 
officiate in laying those unsettled spirits, and accord- 
ingly he used his best endeavom's, which had the 
happiest effect in most cases, but one unruly mustard- 
pot, I am told, continues to dance about in a most 
supei'natural manner, to the awe and astonishment 
of all beholders. It must certainly be cracked ! 



BUTE. 41 

We are now preparing to leave Rothesay and 
the six thousand inhabitants of Bute, with much 
esteem and regret, after having seen more of the 
island, during a two days' residence, than some of 
our friends during as many summers ; but strangers 
in any place make a point of seeing it thoroughly, 
while residents put off, w^hat can be at any time 
done, from day to day, till "/e bon temps est passe, ^' 
besides which, they gradually get into such regular 
tread-mill habits, that the effort would be intolera- 
bly troublesome, to stray, for any inducement, beyond 
their customary beat! Now for a moral reflection! 
I see it temptingly before me, ready to fill up this 
vacant corner in my paper ; but you have made one 
already, for who has not experienced, in more 
important things, the evil of delay, and the power 
of habit ? 

Did you ever hear of the Irishman who men- 
tioned that he had read Johnson's Dictionary straight 
through, and thought it interesting, though rather 
unconnected? Now, my letter will be perfectly 
satisfied if you pronounce as favourable a verdict on 
its merits, seeing there is no visible hook and eye 
to connect the parts together ; but you may safely 
take up the pages, or lay them down at any place, 
without fear of losing the thread, as there really is 
none, and the sooner you answer this the better, 
telling me all about every body, and a great deal 
besides. I should like to be " pursued," like Mrs. 



42 BUTE. 

Hemans, by " a Maelstrom of letters," till my desk 
"boils over;" and no autograph can be more pre- 
cious to any collector, than yours is to your affec- 
tionate cousin and sincere admirer, ; there, by 

the way, is a turn quite in the old school, for all 
letters ended long ago by the writer bringing in his 
name with a neat sweep, making it part of the 
sentence. We see this successfully achieved by that 
model of formal letter-writers, Mrs. Montague, and 
ditto Pope, Madame de Sevigne, and all the standard 
writers of those literary days. That fashion is, how- 
ever, now exploded, but not, I am sorry to say, the 
fulsome adulation with which all authors, in all 
ages, past, present, and to come, even Christians ! 
have bespattered each other, exchanging panegyrics 
like any other article of barter, dealing out flattery 
by the ounce, and receiving back compliments by 
the hundred- weight. You are scarcely a " licensed 
hawker," not being yet in the press, but only print 
a single sonnet, and the shades of Grey and Gold- 
smith shall be invoked to hail a kindred spirit, or 
called on, if you like the dose stronger, to " hide 
their diminished heads." What a strange state the 
world must have been in before writing was in- 
vented ! I have often wondered how the ancient 
patriarchs passed their time, living several hundred 
years without books, letters, manufactures, shops, 
or even money, for the world would fall into a 
perfect stagnation now without them all. 



KYLES OF BUTE. 



WRITTEN IN HALF-A-DOZEN PLACES. 

Let the lily of France in luxuriance wave, 
Let the ,sh;imii , ,. of Erin its beauty maintain 
Let the rose of fair England still waft its perfume, 
But the thistle of Scotia will dearest remain 

My dear Cousin, — The best moralists have found 
out, that, if our duties are to be well performed, we 
must convert them into pleasures, and accordingly I 
have performed that happy transformation, in respect 
to keeping up our correspondence, which is so much 
more a pleasure than a duty, that if the custom of 
letter-writing had not been established before our 
time, I should certainly have invented it to-day, in 
order to make you a partaker in scenes of delight 
and admiration, which would soon fade away 
entirely from my own recollection, like the bright 
colours of twilight, melting into darkness and obli- 
vion, but for the opportunity thus afforded me, to 
record the flitting impressions of the moment, hot 
and hot as they occur. 

The Romantic Kyles of Bute, celebrated for 
their rugged magnificence, are frequently compared 
to the Rhine, but, in my opinion, decidedly superior. 



44 KYLES OF BUTE. 

Never having yet steamed down that far-famed 
river, some matter-of-fact persons might be apt to 
consider my authority questionable, but you will be 
as ready to stand up for Scotland as myself, seeing 
we are like the actors in the Critic, " when we do 
agree, our unanimity is wonderful." I have heard 
many travellers, after an impartial examination of 
both, however, pronounce their verdict in favour of 
our own scenery, on account of the many beautiful 
residences on the banks. The Frith of Clyde is 
a hard-working arm of the sea, every diop of its 
waters being on duty daily, in the boilers of those 
innumerable steam-boats which ply incessantly on 
its widely-extended smface, all moving miracles of 
fire and water, in one of which we proceeded west- 
w^ard, through scenery that has few equals in the 
world. At every turn, the mountains seemed to 
close round us like those that stopped the career of 
Captain Ross, and we were imprisoned within a 
circular barrier of wooded and rocky hills, with " the 
blue above, and the blue below," but the narrow sea 
still found its own way out of the labyrinth, and carried 
us along with it, through a maze of beautiful old 
castles, villas, and villages, all sprinkled about by 
the finger of taste, and looking their very best, under 
a bright glowing sunshine. I should like to live a 
hundred summers, equally divided among the hun- 
dred places w^e passed during these few hours, merely 



KYLES OF BUTE. 45 

catching a momentary glimpse of their velvet lawns, 
drooping trees, smoking chimneys, which promised 
internal comfort, rustic chairs that seemed growing 
spontaneously out of the ground, and a noble array 
of " handsome mountains," uniting grandeur to 
grace, and giving a dash of perfection to the whole. 
" Never did fifty things at once appear so lovely, — 
never, never." 

Among those shifting scenes, the first which 
claimed our notice was the old castle of Kames, and 
afterwards South Hall, a house not very illustrious 
in respect to architecture, and glaring in a new 
dress of whitewash, which seemed to have been put 
on fresh and clean that very morning ; but it is an 
extremely pretty place, with an appearance of 
perfectly English comfort. We felt conscious at a 
glance, that the proprietor, Mr. Campbell, is not an 
absentee, as he evidently pays great attention to 
embellishing the beautiful grounds, and every cottage 
on the green hills aromid is clad in the same 
spotless livery of white, looking at a distance like 
poached eggs on spinach. Each tenant is allowed 
a barrel of lime gratis, whenever he chooses to 
refresh the brilliancy of his walls, which certainly 
require no bleaching liquid to whiten them. One of 
Mr. Campbell's people gained lately the Highland 
Society's prize for exhibiting the neatest cottage 
in this county, and the competition has become 
5 



46 KYLES OF BUTE. 

more eager every year, producing most beneficial 
effects on the comfort of all parties, who thus 
acquire habits of activity and cleanliness, which are 
rapidly diffusing themselves over every part of 
Scotland, where it is thought the ancient family of 
M'Clarty will soon be extinct. 

Nothing is so difhcvilt in landscape gardening, 
as to plant a hill judiciously ; and in this neighbour- 
hood there are some lamentable failures, one being 
divided into clumps, representing exactly the nine 
of diamonds, and another we saw whimsically 
arranged in squares of light and dark-coloured trees 
alternately, like a gigantic chess-board. If there 
had only been men in proportion, we might have sat 
down to a game at once. 

The expense of a passage on board those fine 
Clyde steam -boats is so low, that the price of 
travelling averages less than a halfpenny per mile, 
which must be nearly as cheap as the wear and tear 
of shoes for walking, but even allowing for this, it is 
astonishing to see what crowds of very poor people 
are hurrying about from place to place, at what 
must be a great expenditm'e to them, considering 
that they may not always meet with persons so 
generous as the waggoner, who allowed Whitting- 
ton to walk beside his cart for nothing. Several 
old women, clothed in blue or scarlet cloaks, to hide 
all deficiencies, came on board, bringing a hen, or a 



KYLES OF BUTE. 47 

dozen of eggs, to pay for their passage, instead of 
mere vulgar money, which had a most primitive 
appearance. 

Nothing is more curious than to observe people's 
different ways of getting through life ; and proceed- 
ing onwards, we admired a cottage belonging to an 
Enghsh clergyman, who has retired here beyond 
the cognizance of bishops, and who hermetizes, 
independent of any companion except the sea-gulls 
and herrings, with a mountain behind him, and the 
ocean in front. On a small rocky islet, producing 
not one blade of grass, the reverend proprietor has 
reared a sort of porter's lodge, or some such nonde- 
script ornamental edifice, wishing, perhaps, to cheat 
himself into the belief that he has a neighbour 
wnthin visiting distance, but no highroad passes 
nearer than five miles from this solitary residence, 
the only access to which, by land, is over a trackless 
mountain, on which no wheel has ever rolled. Even 
in the Highlands, where people travel farther to 
hear a good sermon than elsewhere, this retired 
divine, who would have made an excellent Roman 
Catholic saint, could not, if he wished it, gather a 
congregation together, as the great bell of Lincoln 
might ring its "pond'rous knell" on the shore 
without reaching any human ear but his own, so 
detached is he from all hmnan sympathy or inter- 
course. 



48 KYLES OF BUTE. 

On the glittering ocean, near this charming lit- 
tle hel retiro, we were shown a fine sloop, careering 
along, with every sail set, a perfect emblem of joy 
and prosperity ; but I was told that a very few days 
since, this gay-looking vessel had been suddenly 
upset, when three sailors, then on board, were 
drowned. It lay afterwards, apparently as inacces- 
sible as the Royal George, under twelve fathoms of 
water, but was raised again by means of empty 
hogsheads being sunk, and fixed to the sides, so 
that their buoyancy brought the vessel up in com- 
pany to the surface again, where we saw her now 
gracefully dancing on the waves, perfectly reckless 
of the giddy faux pas by which she had consigned 
her whole crew to a watery grave. 

After winding, turning, and meandering some 
time longer through the Kyles of Bute, till we faced 
almost every point of the compass in succession, 
another lovely cottage was displayed, looking as if 
it had arrived in a box from Richmond Hill, being 
a perfect nest of beauty, tastefully built, and highly 
ornamented, rising amidst a verdant lawn, and en- 
compassed by a rich profusion of trees. We were 
preparing a few exclamations of admiration and 
delight, when a good-natured friend, who had obli- 
gingly appointed himself our "Tourist's Guide," 
and knew a history for all we saw, pointed out 
within a few yards the ci-devant proprietor of this 



ia'I,ES OF BUTE. 49. 

little fairy dwelling, who actually ruined himself in 
his enthusiasm to embellish it. He is a militaiy- 
looking man, of good address, and old family, but 
sold his commission in the army, that here he might 
exchange the sword for the ploughshare. After- 
wards, he found the expense of building so great, 
that he had to part with the place which he had 
ruined himself to adorn; he then enlisted under 
General Evans, but " still to his mouth adhered the 
wooden spoon," for in Spain he lost his all, and now 
subsists on charity. We do occasionally see some 
melancholy illustrations of the old proverb, " He 
who is born under a three-halfpenny planet, will 
never be worth twopence ;" but the chief moral to 
be drawn from this " ower true tale," is, that no 
one should neglect the admonition of Scripture, to 
" count the cost" before he begins to build. From 
the moment any Scotch proprietor lays the founda- 
tion of a new house, he may consider himself a 
bankrupt, because he never leaves himself a suffi- 
cient income to inhabit it, and he never seems able 
to stop while a stone remains in the quariy. It is 
a national mania to overdo both our public and pri- 
vate buildings, for, as Burns says, " 'Tis pride lays 
Scotland low," and many a vacant, unfurnished 
drawing-room, many a cold, wide, ill-lighted stair- 
case, and many a comfortless dining-room, that 
never saw a dinner, bears watness against the 
5* 



50 AIRD LAMONT. 

founder that he calculated two and two would make 
five. It is a golden rule, that every house should 
be rather too small for the proprietor's income, and 
those who build a castle in the air, should wait till 
they are circumstanced like Lord Bacon, who was 
censured by Queen Elizabeth for having very small 
rooms, when he courteously replied, "Your Majesty 
has made me too large for my house !" When our 
unfortunate fellow-traveller had built himself out of 
house and home, the cottage was purchased by a 
rich widow, who bequeathed it to her nephew, a 
respectable fish-monger from Paisley, and he may 
now be seen watching from his window shoals of 
living fish passing along with provoking impunity, 
when they might formerly have made his fortune 
in the shop, with a due proportion of lobsters and 
oyster sauce. 

We next transferred our admiration to the Arran 
mountains, with their torn, ragged summits, and 
almost inaccessible crags, which realize your defini- 
tion of a precipice, being all "perpendicular heights, 
from which any one throwing himself would be 
killed on the spot." These hills are quite a botan- 
ical garden, abounding in rare plants, one of which 
was given me formerly to taste, and had exactly the 
flavour of an oyster. 

Towards evening we doubled Aird Lamont 
point, reckoned, on this coast, a perfect Cape of 



CAMPBELLS. 51 

Good Hope for storms; but the wind treated us 
with extraordinary consideration, only blustering a 
little, to show its own importance, while our smo- 
king vessel staggered along like a tipsy man, reel- 
ing away from a noisy, scolding wife. The La- 
monts are among the veiy few clans whose chief- 
tainship remains undisputed, as there is scarcely 
another family of the name, except that of the pre- 
sent Laird. They once possessed the largest estates, 
next to the Duke of Argill's, in this county. Scotch 
entails are made of tough materials, but neverthe- 
less much of their original property has escaped to 
other proprietors, yet an elegant modern house, 
beautifully situated, and facing several arms of the 
sea, still belongs to the chief, though, after having 
expected a castle as old as his pedigree, I was quite 
disappointed to see one scarcely a day old. 

We now advanced towards a cluster of places 
belonging to Campbells, of every date, rank, and 
degree, in one of which the poet who adorns that 
name is said to have written his " Pleasures of 
Hope," — a work, the success of which must have 
more than realized every hope or wish an author 
could entertain, and often " charms when pleasures 
lose the power to please." 

Some time since, a West Indian planter amassed 
an extensive estate, in the very centre of all the 
Campbells, by purchasing every small property as 



52 CAMPBELLS. 

it fell into the market, and thus becoming what is 
called in Scotland " a laird eater." All the Cap- 
tain Campbells were indignant at this intrusion, as 
unwelcome and unexpected as the presence of a 
stranger among the ancient tenants of a rookery. 
Not one of them deigned to leave his card upon the 
oiouveau riche, whom they nicknamed " the great 
treacle merchant from Glasgow," and at last find- 
ing himself so lonely and unsociable, he made a 
final effort to be neighbourly, by writing this very 
simple appeal to one of the clan Campbell, who 
related the circumstance, " Shouldn't you visit me 1" 

The first ten miles of Loch Fyne are fine only 
in name, as here and there we took leave of trees 
entirely ; but the beach is beautifully smooth, and 
the water clearer than a diamond. At Tarbert, a 
name which means " the boat carrying," we were 
amused at the story of a Norwegian king six centu- 
ries ago, who had been promised possession of every 
island in the west of Scotland which he could cir- 
cmnnavigate with his boat ; so he caused himself to 
be dragged in a small skiff across the narrow isthmus, 
only three miles in breadth, connecting the southern 
part of Argyleshire with the mainland, and claimed 
possession of that fine tract of country. What 
would the Jockey Club have said to this rather 
black-leg transaction ? 

S0021 after passing Tarbert, in a very good, 



CAMPBELLS. 53 

well-wooded, and conspicuous " location," we ad- 
mired Barmore, a handsome new house, in Burn's 
best st}le of architecture, commanding on one side 
a fine \iew of the Clyde, and in the opposite direc- 
tion, a long range of Loch Fyne, but in front the 
whole edifice is modestly concealed behind a small 
round island, or peninsula, the effect being very 
much as, you might imagine, if a young lady low- 
ered her parasol, not to be stared out of coimtenance, 
and yet glanced out on each side, to see that she 
was not entirely overlooked. 

Strangers here are much perplexed by the uni- 
versal custom of calling proprietors by the name of 
their estates, which is necessary on account of 
every gentleman bearing the same surname. A 
Miss Campbell, who married once in Norfolk, 
brought her husband to visit in Argyleshire, and 
soon afterwards, at a dinner party, the host politely 
asked his guest to take wine, adding, " Machrehan- 
ish, Auchnacraig, Drumnamucklock, Achadashe- 
naig, and Fasnacloich will join us !" The bewil- 
dered Englishman could not conceive what these 
uncouth sounds might mean, till he hastily glanced 
round the table, and saw five eager faces looking 
towards him, with cordial smiles, and extended 
glasses ! 

Inverneil, belonging to the clan Campbell, is 
rather small, but pretty, and poetical looking, sur- 



54 CAMPBELLS. 

rounded by romantic hills, wood, and water, which 
would do admirably in verse, mth the embellish- 
ment of a few golden sunsets, and silver moon- 
beams, if we could find rhymes enough. It is rather 
hard upon landscapes of great merit and beauty, 
such as many we passed to-day, that the Cumber- 
land lakes had the good fortune to monopolize so 
large a share of our bards ; and I wish we could 
bring a poet-of-all-work here, to celebrate those 
places I am about to describe, which had not the 
mere villa-look of vulgar prosperity, but an air of 
elegance and refinement which showed they were 
accustomed to good company. A Welsh baronet, 
Sir John Orde, has paid our Scottish hills the com- 
pliment to settle here, and lately reared the house 
of Kilmurry, a dark-grey edifice of very dismal- 
looking stone, opposite to which is a gay riante 
little cottage, belonging to a civil engineer, with 
every thing in miniature, forest, park, garden, and 
ofl&ces, all on a Liliputian scale, as if they were 
the mere model of something hereafter to be real- 
ized. 

After flitting past the charming place of Oak- 
field, belonging to a Campbell, vice Macneil sold 
out, we were shown the residences of two Colonel 
Macneils, not relations, placed on opposite sides of 
the loch. It might be quite a comedy, at these 
houses, sometimes, when visiters arrive at the wrong 



CAMPBELLS. 55 

gale ! and the proprietors must be constantly open- 
ing each other's letters, and paying each other's 
bills. 

Next in the procession of very pretty places, 
came Ottar and Ballimore, both belonging to the 
well-lodged clan of Campbell, and then a most en- 
chanting place, Minart, now for sale; and as an 
auctioneer could scarcely exaggerate its beauty, if 
any Campbell in the wide world has reahzed 
enough by rail-road speculations, or in Australia, to 
purchase it, I think the future Campbell of Minart 
will be one of the most enviable small proprietors 
in Argyleshire. 

Continental travellers all acknowledge that in 
Britain only are to be seen those charming country 
residences, which give us ideas of rural happiness, 
and fill the mind with thoughts of human life and 
human enjoyment, thus awakening the keenest 
interest and sympathy of which our hearts are 
capable. Even the most captivating scenery is to 
me almost like a blank sheet of paper, till it be 
written over wnth the actions or feelings, the history 
or poetn^- of other days, and as the loftiest mountain 
gains a new interest, if even the most insignificant 
living animal be seen on the surface, and the 
\v'ide ocean itself is overlooked, while our most 
eager gaze rests on a distant vessel buffeting the 
breeze, so also the permanent abodes of men where 



56 CAMPBELLS. 

families have successively lived and died, and where 
the joys and sorrows of life have been, or still are 
felt, afford subjects for reflection and thought not 
to be exhausted. Neither music, poetry, nor sce- 
nery, can awaken permanent interest, without in 
some degree touching our sympathies. I seldom 
read books of eastern travels, because they seem all 
filled with gold embroidery, dark eyes, fringe and 
chocolate, and I am wearied of savage countries 
>vith tatooing, red feathers, hunting, and idolatry ; 
but, as Madame de Stael says, " the homes of 
Great Britain are the best homes upon earth," and 
there, among hills and glens of surpassing beauty, 
w^e may imagine scenes of domestic felicity, such as 
can only be known in a civilized and in a Christian 
country, while every mountain and stream speaks of 
days long passed, and reminds us of the vanished 
generations, whose history, distinctly recorded in the 
memory, is so nearly connected with our own. 

The most perfect little mvltum in parvo of 
loveliness that w^e saw, during this enchanting 
voyage, was a little bird's-nest of a place, called 
Penimore, surrounded by grassy hillocks, rich hol- 
lows, luxuriant trees, noble mountains, and a %vide 
stretch of ocean, bounded by distant promontories. 
No one could see that little miniature of beauty, 
without wishing to land there, and take it for the 
summer ! A beau ideal of perfect happiness arises 



INVERARY. 57 

before the fancy in beholding such a spot of fairy- 
like beauty, but a fairy's wand would be necessary 
actually to realize an exemption from those vulgar 
cares and anxieties of life which intrude themselves 
every where ; besides which, living in those veiy tiny 
cottages, the inmates must require singularly good 
tempers, as it would be impossible there to avoid 
any one who chose to have a fit of ill-hiunour, and 
to call it a head-ache. 

The approach to Inverary is a master-piece of 
natural beauty, and I could have exclaimed like the 
Frenchman, " Grand ! magnifique ! pretty well !" 
The deep blue waters of Loch Fyne, glittering like a 
sapphire, and fringed to their very margin with 
mass)- trees, — the dark grey Castle embosomed in 
old ancestral forests, the town situated on a charm- 
ing beach, the nearer hills clothed to their summits 
with waving foliage, and the purple outline of many 
a savage mountain beyond, looking like a rough 
outer crust to enclose and protect the whole. This 
varied landscape might almost be said to represent 
the gradual progress of civilization, from the far-off 
times of stern uncultivated barbarism, to the softer 
graces and refinement of modern days, when rough 
majestic nature is tamed and embellished by the 
hand of art, losing half its peculiarities of character, 
but gaining in fertility and beauty. 

I wish we could send you a specimen of what 
6 



58 INVERARV. 

nature does for this part of the world, in the shape 
of mountains and trees ! Many of these shady 
groves were planted, two centuries ago, by the 
Marquis of Argyll, who died afterwards a martyr 
for the Presbyterian Church, and though timber to 
the value of more than .£100,000 has fallen during 
the last Duke's reign, who likewise sold j£300,000 
of land, yet a drive through the Roebuck Park, 
Glenshira, Glenaray, and Glen Douglas, will show 
you, that while the ranks are sadly thinned, some 
fine old veterans yet sumve the havoc, and are now 
in safe protection, as their lives might be insured to 
any amount under the present Duke, who is a con- 
servative in woods and forests, as much as in 
politics. When the late Duke's health was drank 
at an Inverary public dinner, under the old family 
designation of " M'Caillain More," he rose amidst 
enthusiastic plaudits to return thanks, but suddenly 
struck by the change which his own extravagance 
had made in the fortunes of his ancient family, he 
silently sunk back in his chair, and burst into tears. 
The most thankless labour on earth is, to at- 
tempt describing scenery, therefore I shall not put 
you out of breath with a scramble to the summit of 
Duniquaich, 800 feet high, and wooded to the top 
with real trees, not mere bushes, where tourists seem 
to mount for no better purpose than to inscribe their 
own insignificant names, (of which we cannot but 



mVERARY. 59 

wonder to see any one vain,) on the rocks, and in a 
little antique tower, where chalk, pencils, and pen- 
knives have done their utmost to immortalize the 
industrious writers. 

An English grumbler, whom we encountered 
here, confessed that he actually lost his way in " a 
forest !" and perpetrated a pun on the occasion, 
saying, " he was lost in a maze" — that he had gone 
up our hills, " merely to run them down again ;" add- 
ing a gratuitous remark, "that Blenheim was a much 
larger house than Inverary, and that the Duke of Dev- 
onshire had considerably finer trees than any here." 
We yielded both these points with the most exem- 
plary candour, and he then looked round the shady 
path, remarking, that it was a relief anywhere to 
lose sight of the sea, as he was perfectly tired of 
looking at it ! But when asked if this landscape 
was completely to his mind, he answered with cha- 
racteristic humour, " The grass is perhaps rather too 
green !" 

I could scarcely have conceived, indeed, that 
green could exhibit so gaudy a variety of tints as 
the park and trees did here ! The contrasts of 
colour formed a brilliant mosaic, pale delicate pea- 
green, and rich brown shades mingling with the 
nearly black firs, and all showing each other off to 
the greatest advantage. If you ever plant trees, 
and have an extravagant spendthrift for your heir, 



60 mVERARY. 

let them all be beeches, not from any compliment to 
their merit, but because the timber being of little 
value, their lives are sure to be spared, for among 
trees, as well as among men, it is generally the best 
that go first, and the refuse remain behind ! How 
humble and pathetic was the exclamation of a 
Christian, who had survived all his cotemporaries, 
" They had ^vings to soar, and are fled, — ^I had none, 
and am left behind." Men, trees, and houses, all 
have flourished and decayed here in the long lapse 
of centuries; but one single object has remained 
unaltered — a grey, hoary Druid's stone raises its 
aged head in the park, and has maintained that sol- 
itary position unhurt amidst the war of elements, 
and the wreck of matter, being of older descent 
than even M'Caillain More himself ; but as it is cer- 
tain death in the Highlands to disturb a Druid's 
cairn, we kept at a respectful distance. I rever- 
ence all those old superstitious observances, and 
would "nod to every magpie," or pick up every 
pin, rather than brave the inevitable misfortunes 
threatened in the Highlands to those who pass 
either unnoticed. 



INVERARY. 



Invekary Inn. 

Should once the world resolve to abolish 
All that's ridiculous and foolish, 
Ii would have nothing leiUo do 
To apply in jesi or earnest to ! 

Butler. 

My dear Cousin, — Having an invaluable stock 
of leisure on hand, I now proceed to bestow an hour 
of it on you, though my opportunities of observation 
are not, perhaps, much more ample than those of 
the Irishman, who said he knew all about the French 
Court, having once seen Louis XIV. riding at 
Versailles. 

The famous Soame Jenyns used to remark, that it 
cost him exactly .£300 a-year to be cheated good- 
humouredly, without losing his temper, and that he 
thought it well worth the money ; but very few travel- 
lers go about the world on liberal principles like these, 
for I believe there is more grmnbling than cheating in 
the Highland inns ; and having heard many tomists 
in a complaining key, I must say, that here we have 
found London comforts, with certainly nothing like 
London prices, and the innkeeper has actually a 
marine villa, about half a mile distant, for his chil- 
6* 



62 INVERARY. 

dren's sea-bathing quarters, that the house may be 
kept perfectly neat and quiet ! 

In our sitting-room here, the ladies of Inverary 
have placed a large open chest, filled with dolls, 
bags, di'awings, and purses, enough to have furnished 
a superb stall in any bazaar, with their prices an- 
nexed, and a written notice hung up, that these arti- 
cles are to be sold for charitable purposes, while 
the landlady is ready to charge any article in the bill 
that we may happen to fancy. I was informed, when 
depositing the price of a reticule, that, last summer, 
this little shop, without a shopkeeper, realized the 
sum of £14:1 This modest appeal to our liberality 
was quite irresistible, but there is so perpetual a 
traffic going on in society now with ladies selling 
their own manufactures for some undeniably good 
purpose, that I often feel, like poor aunt Grizzy with 
the shirt buttons, and would much rather pay five 
shillings to be off the bargain, than give twenty for 
some perfectly useless piece of frippery, like the 
" elegant thread-papers," or paper candlesticks with 
paper extinguishers, which seem intended to illus- 
trate the opinion of an old lady in respect to pres- 
ents, that "the more useless they are, the more 
elegant." 

I was amused, when sitting at the inn window, 
to see the town-crier stroll lazily past, tolling his 
bell, and calling aloud with the ti'ue nasal drone of 



INVERARY. 63 

a Highlander, not very unlike a cracked bagpipe, 
" There's a silver spoon been found in the street last 
night ! if anybody lost it, he may get it again !" 
Several persons stopped him, pretending in jest to 
claim it, and one individual became so very earnest 
to ascertain whether it was " a big or a little one," 
that the public functionary replied, " If ye had lost 
it, ye would have known that," and acknowledged 
he had not yet been allowed to see the stray article 
hunself, adding, in evident indignation, that the old 
woman who found this treasure would not trust him 
with a glimpse of it, but he manfully declared his 
intention of returning immediately, to decline adver- 
tising it any more, unless she showed him the spoon 
without reserve, adding, in a tone of injured dignity, 
" she wouldn't even tell me if it was a toddy-ladle, 
or a tea-spoon !" Diogenes tried all his life in vain 
to find an honest man, but we flatter ourselves that 
among: womankind there would never have been so 
lamentable a scarcity, and especially now, when we 
may point with trimnph to Inverary. 

The late Duke of Argyll, like the majority of 
noble Scottish proprietors, was almost entirely an 
absentee ; and, if a muster-roll were called over in 
Great Britain and Ireland of every landlord's name, 
how few in their own places could answer, "here!" 
One gentleman, on the look-out for a country resi- 
dence, assured us he had inspected about fifty, each 



64 INVERARY. 

SO desirable, that he would like to have taken them 
all, while the owners had vanished to the Continent. 
There, in a miserable lodging, they will probably 
waste their existence on amusement instead of hap- 
piness, taking the shadow for the substance, — admir- 
ing side-scenes at the theatre, instead of their own 
magnificent landscapes, — seeing their children grow- 
ing up around them without heart or principle, — 
frequenting the opera-house, instead of the church, — 
going through life without usefulness, and suffering 
death without consolation. It is a mournful ex- 
change, and even with respect to minor comforts, I 
never can fancy the advantage of possessing orna- 
mental vases instead of wash-hand basins, gilded 
ceilings instead of carpets, and marble statues in- 
stead of livery servants, " mais chacim a son gOiU.^' 
Those only can estimate pleasures who have tried 
them, and perhaps when you and I succeed to our 
great estates, we may learn, like other landed proprie- 
tors, to hate the sight of them. As Lord Bacon re- 
marks, " It is a melancholy state, having nothing 
more to desire, and a thousand things to fear." The 
most wretched feeling of all is, the want of a want ; 
and I often think that poultry, which are, we know, 
unable to exist without swallowing a daily portion 
of stones and gravel, might aptly illustrate our ab- 
solute necessity for hardships and difficulties. As 
men are not born to sit down perfectly satisfied any- 



mVERARY CASTLE. 65 

where in this world, I suppose the very perfection of 
all those beautiful castles, villas, and cottages so 
generally abandoned, leads to satiety and weariness ; 
but I should like to convince myself by experience, 
that all my theories of " almost perfect happiness" 
are fallacious. Probably no one would have believed 
that the beautiful fruit in the garden of Hesperides 
was unpalatable till he tasted it, and, as far as one 
can g-uess externally, the proprietor of a noble estate, 
residing among an attached and grateful tenantry, 
might require the admonition of Philip's slave, 
" Remember you are mortal," in order to moderate 
his interest in all around him, when gazing on the 
patrimony bequeathed to him hy his ancestors, and 
about to be inherited by his children. Few have 
more cause for pleasurable feelings than the present 
Duke of Argyll, successor to a long line of noble 
progenitors, and inheriting a place so abounding in 
natural beauty and in historical interest as Inverary, 
where the family of Argyll exercised an almost regal 
influence, which has made their name conspicuous 
in every page of our Scottish annals. When sur- 
rounded by the scene of their many bold exploits, I 
scarcely could grudge their memory the triumph of 
that old song, written in derision of our clan, "The 
Campbells are coming, the Sinclairs are running." 

Inverary Castle is a dark, handsome, square 
building, with massy round towers at each corner, 



6G INVERARY CASTLE. 

and was founded in 1745, an odd year to choose 
for building a residence, when so many in Scotland 
were at that very time destroyed ; but the Duke of 
Argyll took, as it turned out, the safe side on that 
occasion, rightly preferring, like so many of his 
ancestors, his religion even to his loyalty ; and as 
two of his predecessors laid their heads on the block 
for the Protestant faith, he was equally true to his 
principles, though fortunately so great a sacrifice 
did not turn out to be necessary. 

If the sunk story of Inverary Castle could but 
make itself visible, the house would be amazingly 
improved, as it only wants drawing up to acquire a 
suitable degree of ducal dignity and magnificence ; 
and it is likewise considerably shortened by a singu- 
lar looking plantation of laurel, a solid mass of 
which entirely surrounds the house, cutting off sev- 
eral feet from the apparent height of the walls. 
The whole bed of these evergreens is clipped so 
perfectly flat on the top, that you might almost 
drive a waggon over the surface, and at stated dis- 
tances a narrow grass walk intersects them, the 
whole being surrounded by a strong iron railing. 
We stood for several minutes conjecturing w^hat 
could have been the origin of this curious deformity, 
and guessed every cause except the right one. It 
could scarcely be a cover for game so near the 
house ; it could never have been intended as an or- 



INVERARY CASTLE. 67 

nanient; and at last we endeavoured, but in vain, 
to fancy that it was planned in the form of the fam- 
ily arms ; but after making twenty mistakes, a cice- 
rone came to our relief, a perfect sybil, who solved 
the enigma. This labyrinth was planted by the 
late Duchess to keep off beggars ! All the poor 
of Inverary had been so liberally relieved at the 
Castle formerly, that they became extremely trouble- 
some, besieging all the doors and windows in atti- 
tudes of supplication, and remaining so long, that, 
like the American beggar, their shadows might have 
remained on the wall an hour after they departed. 
This fortification of laurel was a very gentle hint to 
the assailants, and characteristic of the Argyll fam- 
ily, who are peculiarly considerate to the poor, a 
pleasing instance of which was pointed out to me 
here. Between the Duke's park wall and the high- 
road lies a narrow stripe of waste ground, which 
the late Duke allowed to be enclosed with neat 
wooden palings, and divided into little gardens for 
the poor of Inverary, who pay a nominal rent, to 
give them the feeling of tenants, and cultivate what 
fruit or vegetables they please. Romantic little 
arbours have been raised in each enclosure; the 
gates are all painted green ; the busy hum of bees 
is heard in every garden ; and the Duke's park wall 
is here covered with apple and pear trees belonging 
to the poor, among whom a keen spirit of compe- 



68 EWEKARY CASTLE. 

tition prevails ; and I saw several men, women, and 
boys, diligently plying the busy spade, among their 
own fresh green cabbages and currants, all healthy, 
cheerful, and contented. Much old-fashioned clan- 
ishness of feeling still remains in this neighbour- 
hood, where the people frequently mention their 
chief with brightening countenances ; and they say 
that no instance is known on the estate of an old 
tenant being superseded. The grounds of Inverary 
are so perfectly open to strangers, that you would 
be apt to forget they do not belong to yourself; and 
the public coach here has leave to drive thi'ough 
the park, that travellers may enjoy the view, which 
really seems rather an uncommon instance of cour- 
tesy. We saw the stage-coach in full career among 
the stately trees, and a most primitive vehicle it was, 
containing three rows of benches on a platform, ar- 
ranged exactly like a box at the theatre on wheels, 
with no canopy, and drawn by three rough, uncouth, 
awkward-looking horses, yoked unicorn fashion. 

An English passenger complained to A that 

our climate was quite incomprehensible, as the 
clouds became sometimes so exceedingly heavy and 
dark, without producing a drop of rain, that he ac- 
tually burdened himself often with an imibrella when 
it turned out quite unnecessary ! This was a serious 
grievance undoubtedly ; but those massy clouds 
which he criticised, when bathed in a stream of 



INVERARY CASTLE. 69 

sunshine, and lighted with brilUant tints of gold and 
crimson, produced a splendour of effect which any 
clear Italian sky might vainly attempt to equal ; 
and in the far north, when the am'ora borealis shoots 
through the air in long lances of red and blue flame, 
you might fancy the bannei-s of the Almighty float- 
ing across the firmament. 

When we applied for admission at Inverary Cas- 
tle, the chatty old housekeeper seemed really glad 
of an opportunity to practise her mother tongue, 
being situated here somewhat like a post-captain at 
sea, who meets none but inferiors, with whom it 
would be a breach of etiquette to associate ; and she 
was so full of family legends, and almost forgotten 
stories, that if you had pricked her finger, a High- 
land tradition would have flowed out immediately. 

The entrance-hall at Inverary Castle, the whole 
height of the house, is fitted up as an armory, deco- 
rated with a large circle of one hundred and fifty 
muskets, now on half pay, not having seen any 
service since they assisted to place the tottering 
crown on a Protestant head at the battle of Cullo- 
den. Underneath them lies a billiard table, the 
balls on which have been used in many more recent 
conflicts, and above is a gallery, where a military 
band used to perform in the evening when the late 
Duke and Duchess were at home. 



70 INVERARY CASTLE. 

I have so often visited these pictures, that they 
seemed almost to smile upon me as an old friend, and 
you will seldom behold a circle of more magnificent 
looking personages, all as noble in appearance as 
they were in rank. I sometimes wonder what has 
become of the fine large aquiline noses people used 
to wear long ago ! I never yet saw one upon any 
face that seemed to me too large ; but you might 
suppose a carpenter's plane had levelled those of the 
present day, they are so inferior in altitude to some 
of the ancient Earls here, who look like the lords of 
a hundred fortresses, frowning upon their vassals 
with stern authority. 

The heads of great families formerly seem all 
to have been nicknamed by some personal peculiarity. 
In the Sutherland dynasty the colour of the hair 
decided this point, and they had " The Red Earl, 
the Grey Earl, and the Black Earl j" but the Argyll 
family are discriminated according to mental gifts, 
" The Good Duke, and the Great Duke." Great as 
the Great Duke was, however, in his own day, he is 
indebted for most of his modern celebrity to Jeannie 
Deans ! Fame lent her trumpet, for a time, to Sir 
Walter Scott, allowing him to revive the nearly for- 
gotten memory of several grandees in Scottish his- 
tory. Poets and novelists are the real arbiters of 
notoriety. Burns immortalized a single daisy, and 



INVERARY CASTLE. 71 

the Great Unknown re-produced the Duke of Argyll, 
who was fading away to oblivion in a kingdom which 
seemed once unable to exist without him, — 

Argfyll, the nation's whole thunder born to wield, 
And shake alike the senate and the field. 

For Scotland he always stood up at court with a bold- 
ness that endangered his favour with their Majesties. 
When Queen Caroline was regent in the absence of 
George the Second in Hanover, being angry wdth 
the Scotch on account of the Porteous mob, she 
contemptuously asked what sort of people the High- 
land lairds were, when he replied, " Like German 
Princes, very poor and very proud ;" and when she 
threatened to turn Scotland into a hunting-field, the 
Duke significantly rephed, " In that case I shall go 
and get my hounds ready to meet your Majesty." 
On one occasion, George the Second becoming irri- 
tated at his vehement defence of Scotch prerogatives, 
snatched off his Grace's wig and threw it into the 
fire. The Duke instantly retorted, by throwing the 
King's in also, and some attendants behind the door 
hearing a scuffle, rushed in to ascertain the cause, 
when his Majesty, having recovered his presence of 
mind and good humour, called out, " It was only the 
Duke, for a frolic, who threw his ^Wg into the fire, 
and I, to keep him in countenance, threw mine after 
it." When George the Third was angry, he used 
to kick his wig all round the room. 



72 INVERARY CASTLE. 

The Duchesses of Argyll were invariably hand- 
some, and bequeathed an inheritance of beauty to 
all their descendants. It is difficult to say whether 
the ci-devant Miss Bellenden, or Miss Gunning 
would have shone most resplendently, as Queen of 
Beauty at a Tournament, and I could not but think 
how each must successively have embellished and 
enjoyed those gardens and saloons at Inverary, sur- 
rounded by all that renders domestic life attractive ; 
but the family motto, " I can scarcely call these 
things our own," reminds us of a solemn truth. 
The nearer mortals approach to perfect happiness, 
the more do their spirits become touched by the af- 
fecting remembrance that the miracle cannot last, 
and that the brightness of such a noon is but the 
harbinger of night. Their beauty and splendour 
belong now to the history of long-vanished years ! 
When a would-be-wit once saw that lovely picture 
at Bel voir Castle, representing the most celebrated 
beauty of George the Third's court, he clandestinely 
altered the inscription, making it no longer " Isa- 
bella," but " Was-a-bella, Duchess of Rutland !" 
Here Miss Gunning's portrait gives one the idea of 
perpetual youth and beauty, though her reception of 
Boswell, when he visited at Inverary, shows she 
was not always gracious. Having been previously 
married to the Duke of Hamilton and Brandon, Dr. 
Johnson called her " a Duchess of three tails !" and 



INVERARY CASTLE. 73 

since then, all her four sons have been Dukes. The 
lovely Maiy Bellenden is smiling most bewitchingly, 
opposite to her very stern, iron-visaged husband, 
one of the most grim-looking ancestors that I know 
by sight, but perhaps he might be annoyed at hav- 
ing the trouble to sit. I like the plan of your old 
friend, who made it a mle, for the information of his 
family, always when he felt out of humour, to put on 
a white hat, and then there could be no mistake. 
Some people of our acquaintance would never be 
without one ! A poem was published long ago, on 
the first Earl of Argjdl and Lord of Lorn, calling him 
Earl of Guile and Lord Forlorn. 

Here we saw a melancholy melo-dramatic look- 
ing portrait representing the Marquis of Argyll, 
who placed the crown on Charles the Second's 
head at Scone, and afterwards, having sided 
with the Presbyterians, suffered death on the 
same guillotine which also beheaded his son, the 
Earl, four and twenty years afterwards. It was 
originally provided from France by the Regent Earl 
of Morton, whcf was the first to suffer death by it in 
1581. This instrument, commonly called " The 
Maiden," is still to be seen at the Antiquarian Mu- 
seimi in Edinburgh. The Christian calmness of the 
Marquis in the hour of death was truly exemplary. 
He remarked, " I had the honour to place the crown 
upon the King's head, and now he hastens mc to a 
7* 



74 INVERARY CASTLE. 

better crown than his own," and his admonition to 
the clergy may be useful to those of any generation, 
" We must either sin, or suffer, — for myself, I prefer 
temporal to eternal death." 

When the brave and gallant Montrose was 
dragged along the Canongate some years before 
that time, to be ignominiously executed, a balcony 
is still shown, in what was then the Earl of Moray's 
house, where the Marchioness of Argyll, who had 
arrived to celebrate her son's marriage to Lord Mo- 
ray's daughter, looked out to witness the downfall 
of her husband's opponent, and actually spit upon 
him ! This gives no very refined idea of what Mar- 
chionesses were in those primitive days, especially 
when they meddled with politics, and I could not 
but wonder whether any feeling of self-reproach af- 
terwards arose, when she attended her own husband 
in prison, previous to his sharing the same melan- 
choly fate. Argyll and Montrose had each burned 
a castle belonging to the other, and for that reason, 
Argyll generously refused to concur in the sentence 
against his personal enemy. 

We next examined a very pretty pink and white 
picture of Mrs. Gunning, in a blue dress, seated out 
of doors, with her powdered head uncovered, and 
canying a large sable muff. Do you think, to judge 
from the costume, that she sat during winter, or in 
summer 1 Nothing riveted our attention with more 



INVERARY CASTLE. 75 

admiration of its beauty, than the portrait represent- 
ing Lady Charlotte Bury as Aurora, her counte- 
nance radiant hke a beam of Hght, and she is stand- 
ing on a cloud, dressed in flowing robes, which re- 
semble the grey mist of morning, while her scarf is 
as hght as woven wnind. She is supposed to be 
stepping forward, and gracefully scattering flowers 
over the world, but books would now have been 
more suitable. 

The handsome Duke of Hamilton's picture by 
Battoni, painted in Italy before he was of age, looks 
as if the Apollo Belvidere had condescended, for 
one day, to put on a court dress, and to sit for his 
picture, in silk stockings and buckles. We are 
generally told, that he was about the handsomest 
hmnan being who ever appeared on the earth. 
When abroad, his travelling tutor was the celebrated 
Dr. Moore, who obtained, with great difficulty, a 
dispensation for his pupil, before being presented at 
Rome, not to kiss the Pope's toe, on being informed 
of which uncommon privilege, his Grace angrily 
exclaimed, " I woiJd on no account omit the cere- 
mony ! That was the only thing I wanted to see 
the old woman for !" In his last illness, the Duke's 
favourite amusement was, when two of his sers^ants 
read aloud to him alternately, both speaking in the 
strongest provincial accents of their native coun- 
tries, the one being from Cumberland, and the other 



/b INVERARY CASTLE. 

from Somersetshire. I should have recommended a 
third from Aberdeenshire ; and the plan might then 
be a useful hint to invalids, if they were, like the 
patient mentioned in the Arabian Nights, who could 
never be cured unless he were made to laugh. No- 
thing can be more melancholy than the beautiful 
epitaph on Douglas, Duke of Hamilton, by Mr. 
Dunlop, which ends with these reproachful lines, — 

Oh ! gifts neglected, talents misapplied, 
Favours contemned, and fortune unenjo}'ed ; 
Here baffled Nature stands dejected by, 
And hails the shade of Douglas with a sigh. 

Inverary Castle excels in tapestry, and the draw- 
ing-room is, as Mrs. Malaprop would say, " full of 
goblins," all first-rate, the figures being grouped in 
easy, graceful attitudes, though rather discoloured, 
while the flowers, unlike flowers in general, have 
never faded. The large architectural-looking gilt 
chairs are so massy, they could scarcely be called 
moveables, the covers worked entirely over with 
garlands of roses ; and in the breakfast -room hangs 
some excellent Flemish tapestry, representing the 
shooting of wild ducks, in which the sportsman 
seems evidently missing his aim, and the birds look 
mightily unconcerned. You may live in this room 
a year, and not discover a door cut in the tapestry, 
which leads to an inner room, most romantically 
secret and unobservable, to commemorate which, 
Mrs. Radcliffe would have written some mysterious 



INVERARY CASTLE. 77 

adventure. From the window there is a charmino- 

o 

view, which you would not easily tire of gazing at. 
Among the gay ^'isiters of a former generation in 
these rooms, an amusement was long carried on of 
conducting a domestic newspaper, containing all 
the adventures which daily occurred to the parties 
themselves. Contributions were deposited every 
moining anonymously in a box, to which the editor 
alone had access, and nothing could be more amu- 
sing than the wit displayed in many of the articles. 
At length, however, they became rather too per- 
sonal, and were finally discontinued, on a gentleman 
becoming seriously offended, who, being afflicted 
with rather too long a nose, found a paragraph, an- 
nouncing the safe arrival of Mr. R 's nose, and 

that the rest of his person might be expected in a 
few houi-s. 

My letter is growing longer than a double num- 
ber of the Times, therefore I must now set seriously 
about stopping. We find so much to see, that I 
seldom have an hour to sit down, except the few 
minutes occupied in writing to you, and if the wish 
to entertain could ensure its own success, you would 
have no reason to tire ; but I shall some day be say- 
ing to my correspondents, like a tedious old lady 
once to her family, who had become exceedingly 
bad listeners, " I do not ask much of my friends, — 
only to occupy their sole and undivided attention." 



DALMALLY. 



Exiles from the town, who have been driven 

To gaze, instead of pavement, upon grass, 

And rise at nine instead of long eleven. 

Byron. 

My dear Cousin, — You may have observed it 
mentioned in the last Edinburgh Courant, that a 
sheet of paper has been made at Cowan's manufac- 
tory one mile and a half long ! It would suit me 
exactly this morning, when I have so much to say, 
that your post-bag will need to have a large addition 
built to it, especially now when we are only to pay 
a penny for our letters, or rather, I am told, we are 
to be paid something by the very liberal ministry for 
taking the trouble to receive letters at all. 

Ossian was in this country some time before us, 
therefore we must not attempt entirely to supersede 
his writings, as poems are like wine, the older the 
better, and it might perhaps be difficult to hit off 
anything better, especially as a eulogium in prose 
on mountains is not half so bearable as a rhapsody 
in verse. We always rise with the sun, and travel 
as long as he does, generally averaging about six in 
the morning for setting out ; but after this torn-, I 
propose to spend some time in the Castle of Indo- 



DALMALLY. 79 

lence, and shall perhaps be tempted to imitate the 
plan of a half-pay officer, who desired always to be 
awakened at six for parade, merely that he might 
have the pleasure of thinking he need not get up. 

This morning, by peep of day, we were thread- 
ing our way through the hills to Dalmally, where 
mountains and clouds were nearly meeting, though 
their purple outlines continued distinct, and the whole 
scene looked dark and gloomy, as if we had spilled 
a bottle of ink over it. Certainly a little sunshine is 
cheerful sometimes! Ben Cruachan, the loftiest 
mountain among the Alps of Argyleshire, looked 
like a great black thimderbolt that moment hurled 
to the earth, and it has a special right to be admired, 
ha^nng been honourably noticed by Burke, in his 
essay on the Sublime and Beautiful. There are not 
many hills to compare with this, standing three thou- 
sand feet above the level of the ocean; and on so 
gigantic an eminence, a great variety of sea-shells 
are to be found, which must have been deposited 
there during the deluge. These cotemporaries of 
Noah were well worth collecting, to adorn your 
museum, if we could have spared five minutes to run 
up for them ; but after lying there so long at rest, 
it would be cruel to disturb their repose, as I have 
no new geological theory to establish or upset. One 
of the mountains in this neigbomhood is called Ben 
Mak'money, but I guess it is not a very lucrative 



80 DALMALLY. 

property, as the rent would be, to all appearance, 
exorbitant at twopence a-year, and the poet wisely 
remarks, 

" What's ihe worth of any thing, 
But so much money as 'twill bring V 

The Tourist's Guide Book desired us to expect 
a charming view along this valley, which had not, 
as we proceeded, much to boast of; and the same 
misleading informant asserted, that the road along 
Loch Awe seemed arranged on purpose to conceal 
its beauties, whereas it meandered very tastefully 
over hills and glens in graceful festoons, tucked up 
in some places, and sweeping down elsewhere, in a 
manner very becoming to the country, but exceed- 
ingly fatiguing to our one horse. We walked up 
the steep ascents in consideration of Mr. Martin's 
act, for the sake of our hard-working quadruped, 
and I would quite as willingly have walked down 
for our own sakes, as we frequently seemed on the 
point of finding a short cut to the bottom, sending 
the gig before the horse. Some parts of the country 
are very bare, and before the heather is in flower, it 
looks so dry and scorched, there seems no vitality 
left ; but now that ladies take guns on the moors, 
as well as gentlemen, I would have seen it to more 
advantage with a gun in my hand during August. 
Did you hear of a great sportswoman who lately 



INISHAJL. 81 

distinguished herself by shooting a noble red-deer, 
and when it fell, she fainted ! Perhaps if she 
had fainted first, it might have been more to the 
purpose ! 

The old Cistercian monastery of Inishail, alias 
the Beautifid Isle, stands on the edge of Loch Awe, 
quite roofless and deserted. " All green and wildly 
fresh without, but worn and grey beneath." Now 
that the Roman Catholics are so rapidly rising into 
supremacy again, perhaps a colony of monks may 
once more retire there, to waste their useless exist- 
ences in a life of selfish indolent seclusion, supplying 
the want of heartfelt spiritual devotion by the mere 
pomp and ceremony of external forms. If by shut- 
ting out the world, we could close out its sorrows 
and temptations, this would certainly be the very 
place for such a hopeless experiment — the monks 
having been buried alive amidst wood and water ; 
but as old St. Jerome candidly remarked, after living 
some time in his solitary cave, " Go where I will, 
still Jerome is with me." A curious instance oc- 
curred lately, showing the impositions unhesitatingly 
practised by the Popish priests on their congrega- 
tions. From the pulpit of a crowded chapel, the 
text given out by a Roman Catholic preacher was 
taken from St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, when 
he began by gravely remarking, " You see, ray 
friends! this is all addressed to the Romans! it 
8 



82 KILCHURN CASTLE. 

would be long enough before St. Paul would have 
written such an epistle to Protestants !" 

Kilchurn Castle, on Loch Awe, we saw next, so 
beautifully situated on a wooded peninsula, that it 
has become the favourite subject of landscape paint- 
ers, two of whom, Thomson and Macculloch, the 
best artists in Scotland, lately exhibited rival views 
of it at the same exhibition, when parties ran high 
respecting which had succeeded best. I wish either 
could lend me his brush at this moment. It was 
garrisoned by Lord Breadalbane in 1745, but has 
since been struck by lightning ; and now a more 
picturesque ruin you could not desire to behold in a 
long day's journey. The fragments remaining are 
both extensive and irregular ; besides which, they 
belong to a story which might have been worked 
\ip into a tolerable novel, or a first-rate ballad, if 
Sir Walter Scott had found time to enlarge and 
embellish the incidents with a few of his own pecu- 
liar touches ; but it would really require a forty- 
Scott power to illustrate all the romances of real 
life we have heard in this neighbourhood. The 
legend of Kilchurn Castle is an old story, but wears 
well, being the more interesting as it relates to the 
Lord of Argyll's second son, who founded the family 
of Breadalbane. This fine old edifice was begun by 
the first Lady Campbell of Glenorchy, during her 
husband's absence, whose affairs having become 



KILCHURN CASTLE. 83 

embarrassed, he had gone abroad to serve as a 
Knight of Rhodes. In foreign warfare he distin- 
guished himself extremely ; but nothing more being 
heard of him during so long a period in his own 
country, his lady, who had become very affluent, 
began to imagine herself an inconsolable widow, 
and determined not to remain so long. You have 

heard of Mrs. P , who played at cards with her 

lover the year of her husband's death, staked her 
grief, and lost it ! Now the process in Lady Camp- 
bell's case seems to have been quite as siunmary, 
seeing she recovered her spirits on the shortest pos- 
sible notice, and entered into a new engagement; 
but before it could be fulfilled, Sir Colin was in full 
progress homewards, expecting a rapturous recep- 
tion on his return. Having one evening joined a 
jovial party at an inn on the road, he was shocked 
to hear a gossiping discussion respecting his own 
supposed death, his wife's projected marriage, and 
the splendid new castle at Kilchurn, all of which 
seemed to his astonished ears so entirely fabulous, 
that he must have felt on this occasion nearly as 
much out of place as the man who attended his 
own fimeral. Nothing is more irritating than to 
have yoiu" news disbelieved ; and the stranger who 
related these interesting and authentic particulars 
became highly indignant at the apparent incredulity 
of his companion, who seemed, as the Highlanders 



84 KILCHURN CASTLE. 

say when thoroughly perplexed, " unable to make 
top, tail, or meal of it;" therefore he turned to Sir 
Colin, and inquired what he would give to receive 
certain proof before next day that all he had related 
was tme ; and having been promised an adequate 
donation, he instantly disappeared. Next morning, 
before Glenorchy was awake, the messenger stood 
by his bed-side, roused him, and repeated the stoiy 
as he had told it before ; but seeing his auditor still 
skeptical, the incognito angrily produced Lady 
Campbell's wedding-ring, bearing Sir Colin's name 
and her own on the circumference, and confessed, 
that to prove he had really been within Kilchurn 
Castle, he had stolen it off her finger while she 
slept. Our guide, when he related this part of the 
tale, gave a superstitious shake of the head, and re- 
marked in an under tone, that " certainly this extra- 
ordinary stranger was no' canny." 

The knight immediately sprung upon his horse, 
galloped off at full speed, and reached Kilchurn 
Castle the very day and hour when his successor 
was to have been declared duly elected. In the 
disguise of a beggar, he suiTeyed the castle, and ap- 
plied so importimately at the gate for leave to see 
Lady Campbell, that the Highland servants thought 
it would be " unlucky" to refuse ; therefore they 
prevailed on her to appear for a moment. A well 
filled cup being brought to him, the beggar was 



Kn.CHUKN CASTLE. S5 

desired to pledge a bumper to the bride-elect, which 
accordingly he did, and after draining the last drop, 
lie slipped the wedding-ring into the empty goblet, 
and presented it to Lady Campbell, who instantly 
observed the token, gave a startled glance at the 
stranger, and recognised her long-lost husband. 
We may suppose, though tradition does not enter 
into particulars, that hysterics and all sorts of fine 
feelings ensued, and like the conclusion of most fairy 
tales, they lived happily ever afterwards. During 
the present day, such a termination would scarcely 
be tolerated, as husbands make a very poor figure in 
most novels, which seem generally written to defend 
the misconduct and inconstancy of ladies. We find 
the Charlotte and Werter school of morality coming 
rapidly into fashion of late, in which every wife, 
with a splendid home and magnificent establishment, 
is an amiable martyr, who thinks herself so unsuita- 
bly matched, that it seems inconceivable how she 
ever got into the scrape of being married at all, and 
she finds no harm in confiding her sorrows and per- 
secutions to some sympathizing paragon of a cousin, 
or discarded lover, for whom she feels nothing ex- 
cept grateful regard, but with whom she of course 
luns off at last, and the reader is expected to suffer 
agonies of pity and commiseration, on account of a 
denouement which the whole course of the hero- 
ine's conduct and principles had rendered inevitable 
8* 



86 LOCH AWE. 

from the commencement. It was a good rule pro- 
mulgated long ago, that every lady should suppose 
there is but one good husband in the world, and 
that she has been fortunate enough to marry him, 
but modern heroines are all made to think exactly 
the reverse. 

The cottages in this part of Argyleshire are 
small and dilapidated, like ruinous bee-hives, the 
straw roofs being held on by ropes, to the ends of 
which heavy stones are attached, resembling, as 
Dr. Johnson said, " a row of curl papers." The 
common people seem generally a very diminutive 
race, with hair as black as their cattle, but have 
good features, and their manners are civil and obli- 
ging. In respect to dress, shoes, stockings, and 
bonnets, are not much worn, and the fashions for 
this month are white muslin caps, dark cotton 
gow^ns, made short and scanty in the skirt, and nei- 
ther leather nor prmiella for shoes ; but I always 
maintain, that for hard-working people, the custom 
is both wholesome and cleanly, of having their bare 
feet washed daily, or perhaps hourly, in every 
stream they pass. We were amused to hear that a 
Mahometan, seeing some women once, who had 
walked nearly to church, hastily bathing their feet 
before drawing on their shoes and stockings, grave- 
ly remarked how different were the sacred ceremo- 
nies in various countries, for he had always been 



SCOTTICISMS. 87 

accustomed to throw off his shppers before entering 
a sacred edifice, but here, he observed that our reU- 
gion enjoined people to put thera on. 

What strange and laughable mistakes may be 
committed by even the most intelligent travellers, 
Avhen they make a few superficial inquiries, in pass- 
ing through a new country ! An English clerg)'- 
man, anxious to make himself acquainted with our 
customs, and especially with Presbyterian opinions, 
but not knowing enough of our dialect, to be aware 
that in many parts of the north, the letter " i" is 
pronounced like an " e," stopped one day where 
some women were collected round a pond of muddy 
water, preparing it, in fact, for steeping lint, and 
inquired anxiously what they were doing. The 
reply led him to suppose that some unheard-of pen- 
ance was inflicted in the Highlands at particular 
seasons, as the women replied, with one accord, 
" We are preparing for Lent, Sir !" I was amused 
to be told that old Lady Perth, indignant at hearing 
a Frenchman speak contemptuously of porridge, 
angrily interrupted him, with an allusion to her na- 
tional horror of frogs, saying, " Tastes differ. Sir ! 
some folks like parritch, and others like puddocks.^^ 

On another occasion, a stranger was amazed to 
hear a strict divine, when intending to inculcate on 
his congregation the propriety of receiving a hint 
properly, deliver his advice in these words, " My 



y<5 SCOTTICISMS. 

friends ! be ready at all times to take a hunt ;" and 
I remember seeing an Englishman quite perplexed, 
when told at a party in Scotland, that all the guests 
were " kent people," not meaning to imply that 
they came from the county of Kent, but merely that 
they were well-known personages. In Scotland a 
sore is called an " income ;" and an English tourist 
would be rather perplexed if a beggar came up to 
him, as an old woman did one day to me at Porto- 
bello, asking charity, with a most pitiable counte- 
nance, " because she had a great income on her 
hand." A legacy to any charitable fund is called 
a " mortification ;" and you might hear a truly be- 
nevolent person say, in tones of exultation, that 
" he is happy to hear the blind have got a great 
mortification in Mr. Smith's "unill." If a Scotch 
person says, " will you speak a word to me? " he 
means, will you listen ? but if he says to a servant, 
" I am about to give you a good hearing,''^ that 
means a severe scold. The Highland expression 
for two gentlemen bowing to each other, amused 
us extremely on a late occasion, when a Scotchman 
said to his friend, "I saw your brother last week 
exchange hats with Lord Melbourne in Bond 
Street !" 

We are most industrious travellers, and now 
hurried through the lands of Glenstrae, originally the 
property of a Macgregor, till that clan was cruelly 



LOCH AWE. 89 

inoscribed. They were attacked by the Earl of 
Argyll, and Macgregor bravely defended himself, 
till, being reduced to the last extremity, he sm- 
rendered on the express condition of receiving a safe 
conduct to England. " A Highlandman's promise" 
was formerly proverbial, being kept to the ear, though 
not to the letter, of which this unfortimate landed 
proprietor had painful experience. He was carried 
quite safely to Berwick, after which, his trusty escort 
forced him back to Edinburgh, where, for no of- 
fence but calling his house his own, he was cruelly 
executed, while his property, like Naboth's vineyard, 
fell to the share of a rapacious foe. None of the 
Highland songs are more characteristic and spirited, 
than the melancholy words of that persecuted clan, 
" The Macgregors' Gathering." 

The moon's on the lake, and the mist's on the brae, 
And the clan has a name that is nameless by day ; 
While there's leaves in the forest, and foam on the river, 
Macgregor, despite them, shall flourish for ever ! 

Loch Awe is supposed to have forced a new 
vent for itself in the direction we now pursued, skirt- 
ing along the precipitous banks ; and here certainly 
the waters have squeezed their way through, where 
very little space could be found, between two ranges 
of enormous clmnsy-looking lumps of hills, which 
scarcely allow room enough for a narrow track to 
wind along. Here, as is usually the case in all the 



90 LOCH AWE. 

most dangerous Highland roads, we had not one 
inch of parapet ! I am become the greatest admirer 
of a good substantial stone dike ! Our driver, as 
drowsy as the fat boy in the Pickwick papers, fell 
asleep every instant, on the shortest notice, unless we 
aroused his attention by asking a question ; and you 
would have been amused at the ingenuity with which 
he M^as cross-examined about the road, as if he had 
been a witness in a court of justice, merely to disturb 
his slmnbers, for he could have slept, like Don 
Quixote, mounted on horseback, and leaning on 
his lance. 

The loch gradually narrowed, until it seemed 
scarcely decided whether to be a lake or a river, but 
improving in beauty, and at last dashing along in 
fine style, over large precipitous rocks, while the 
dark masses of water, rushing tumultuously past, 
were enlivened by white feathers of foam, which 
glittered in the sun. Gradually, however, the mist 
darkened around the towering summits of the Ar- 
gyleshire hills, till at last those only who can see 
through a mill-stone, could have discerned their 
outlines at all. 

Fourteen miles from Dalmally, we reached Tay- 
nuit, a small remote inn situated in the parish of 
JNIuckairn, where our attention was first caught by 
a tall grey stone, which we supposed to have been 
coeval with the Druids; but no! — this modern an- 



MUCKAIRN. 91 

lique turned out to be one of the numerous monu- 
ments to Nelson, and was raised by the iron-work- 
ers at Bunawe, at their own sole trouble and cost, 
thus testifying a warmth of enthusiasm quite as hon- 
ourable to his memory as any more elaborate speci- 
men of architecture. 

Here I was surprised to obser\'e an excellent 
church and manse, in most deplorable disorder, the 
shutters all closed, the garden a picture of desola- 
tion, and every thing apparently testifying that 
some great calamity had occurred to cause their 
being thus forsaken, therefore we applied to the 
innkeeper, and afterwards to the parish schoolmas- 
ter, whom we found digging in his own garden, to 
enlighten us, as to what had caused this melan- 
choly aspect of affairs. It turns out to have been 
all occasioned by a veto peiplexity, which has kept 
this parish unoccupied during two years. The 
church of Muckairn is in the gift of Government, 
and a vacancy having occurred in August, 1837, 
four clergymen named by the state arrived to ex- 
hibit their powers in the pulpit, for the purpose of 
pleasing their auditors, and gaining their election 
to the vacant charge. Not one of these candidates, 
however, gave, or could by possibility have given 
the smallest satisfaction, because the congregation 
had previously determined to favour a farmer's son 
in their own neighbourhood, and thus it has hap- 



92 MUCKAIRN. 

pened, as in old times, when a partial veto law was 
once allowed to exist, that parishes remained vacant 
sometimes for several years. Meantime, one of the 
four Government nominees at Muckairn has col- 
lected, after great canvassing among the numerous 
persons entitled to vote, eight signatures, which are 
intended to pass for a " harmonious call," in conse- 
quence of which our informants seem to think this 
active candidate will be precipitated into the pulpit 
of Muckairn. At present that parish has fallen into 
a state of temporary heathenism, having only been 
favoured with miscellaneous preaching one Sunday 
in three weeks from the Argyleshire Presbytery, so 
that the poor ignorant Highlanders may be apt to 
say like the American peasants, " We are not Chris- 
tians, because we have no opportunity." 

As no clergyman's principles and abilities, even 
in respect to preaching, can be duly weighed at a 
popular election or rejection, to be decided by a 
single sermon, private visitation of the sick and 
dying, which is far more laborious, and equally im- 
portant, may probably fall into great disuse, and 
meantime the poor people of Muckairn are in many 
instances now sinking into the grave without benefit 
of clergy. There surely must be something amiss 
in any law which produces so lamentable a result, 
and therefore even if it be the law of the land, there 
seems no advantage in reviving it. 



MUCKAIRN. 93 

In the supplementary chapel of A , a case 

somewhat similar to that of Muckairn lately occurred. 
Three candidates were named to compete before the 
people, two of whom gained over large bodies of 
keen partisans, but the third had only one advocate. 
An eager contest arose, much angry feeling ensued, 
each party threatened to become dissenters, and at 
last the solitary supporter of the impopular candi- 
date, by hinting to each party how very probably 
the opposite faction might succeed, induced a major- 
ity to adopt the neutral plan, of fixing on the indi- 
vidual who had been at first so unanimously rejected. 
Thus the single-handed partisan worked on the 
evil passions of others, to bring in one, who took 
comfortable possession of the vacant chapel, and has 
done the parish duties there ever since. 

We had already passed a parish which had 
become vacant during the late Duke of Argyll's 
life, who received the recommendation of a suitable 
successor, from a pious and esteemed landed propri- 
etor in the neighbourhood, to whom his Grace re- 
turned an answer, that being pledged to support the 
Veto law, he had determined whichever candidate 
sent him a requisition, signed by the largest majority 
of voters, should receive the presentation. One of 
the clergy went off, on hearing this, to the " shinty" 
ground, where the parishioners were assembled in 
great numbers at play, and gave a glass of whiskey 
9 



94 MUCKAIRN. 

to each of those who would sign a petition in his 
own favour, by which means he gained the election. 
I know of one vote in a vacant parish having been 
gained over from the opposite side for a pound of 
tea, and if a hundred votes could be seemed at the 
same price, supposing the tea eight shillings a pound, 
it would require but little arithmetic to calculate how 
very cheaply a living in Scotland might soon be 
purchased by bribery. 

When Mr. Gladstone generously offered a church, 
a school, and an endowment at his own expense to 
the established church of Scotland, a majority of 
pious and learned clergymen, who had been them- 
selves placed in pulpits by the influence of patrons, 
thought it better to reject these important gifts, rather 
than allow the continuance, in one instance, of that 
power by which they had themselves been chosen ; 
and this principle is about now to be carried out 
respecting the whole of Scotland, where most of the 
churches were gratuitously reared by landed proprie- 
tors, whose representatives have since been patrons; 
yet the very existence of our national establishment 
seems apparently considered of no consequence, if 
the clergy and patrons alone continue responsible 
for the choice of ministers, unless the people have 
power superior to both ; and the allegiance of every 
individual to the sovereignty of Christ, is now tested 
by his adherence to a law, for which its very sup- 



MUCKAIRN. 95 

portei-s seem unable to find any distinct warrant in 
Holy Scripture. Doctrines and duties are there 
usually stated with plainness proportioned to their 
relative importance, and while the most minute di- 
rections are given with respect to the divinely ap- 
pointed Le\'itical priesthood in the Old Testament, 
not one word is said in the New about the election or 
rejection by universal suffrage, of Christian minis- 
tei-s. It seems not sufficiently considered, that the 
minority on such an occasion, perhaps one-third of 
the parish, lose all their privilege, and may be those 
who are most competent to appreciate the candidate, 
even on scriptural grounds, and that the aged patri- 
archs and experienced Christians of the parish may 
be those who are entirely out-voted by noisy dema- 
gogues and political religionists. 

A good government is as indispensably bomid 
to support a church, for the purpose of w^atching 
over the souls of its subjects, as an army or navy to 
protect their persons ; but if the Colonel of every 
regiment had to canvass the men for his* appoint- 
ment, or if a Captain in the navy owed his situa- 
tion to the suffrages of his crew, what discipline 
could he ever hope afterwards to maintain ? We 
never hear of children appointing their own tutors, 
students electing the professors at college, or of na- 
tions choosing what ambassador shall bring them 
the terms of peace. 



96 MUCKAIRN. 

It is acknowledged by the best Christians, that 
the preaching of the cross of Christ is an offence to 
the generahty of men, and yet a majority in every 
parish is expected to be in favour of strict evangel- 
ical doctrine ; but even if they were so, how very 
liable is a congregation to become deceived in their 
estimate of strangers appearing in the pulpit once 
or twice for a special purpose! It was discovered 
in London thirty years ago, that, when the Hon. 

and Rev. Mr. L was desirous to leave town, 

and found it inconvenient therefore to preach, his 
brother, a Colonel in the Guards, who exactly re- 
sembled him, frequently officiated in his pulpit with- 
out being detected, and might thus have imposed 
upon any congregation. A lawyer or doctor could 
learn by heart one of Mr. Melvil's sermons, as was 
recently done by a candidate for a parish, so as to 
please a country congregation, by delivering it 
" extempore," and thus obtain a universal suffrage. 
If the people could state an objection to the moral 
or religious character of any candidate, which ap- 
peared sufficiently important, it would then be most 
desirable that the presbytery should have power to 
set him aside, and that the patron should call in an- 
other, but it surely seems a degradation from the 
high and holy independence of a Christian minister, 
that he should undergo the judgment of a mixed 
congregation, who have power to reject him with- 



MUCKAffiN. 97 

out rendering any reason, and that he should have 
so strong an inducement to seek, by " the enticing 
words of man's wisdom," a position in the Church, 
for which he has already obtained the far better 
qualifications of eight years' diligent prayer, study, 
and reflection, and to which he is solemnly conse- 
crated by the approbation of learned and devout 
clergymen. On them the responsibility of admit- 
ting only well-qualified teachers is most emphatic- 
ally laid in that impressive injunction, " Lay hands 
suddenly on no man," while we see that St. Paul, 
by his own individual authority, without reference 
to the people, appointed Timothy and Titus to the 
churches of Ephesus and Crete. 

If " periloas times" should come, when "men 
will not endure sound doctrine, but, after their own 
lusts, would heap to themselves teachers, having 
itching ears," a parish once becoming tinged with 
any false doctrine, no pro\'ision would now remain 
for reclaiming it, as every heresy, not obvious enough 
to attract censure from the General Assembly, would 
be increased by the choice of candidates, — and 
whether it be a tendency to Antinomianism or Uni- 
tarianism, it will be equally renewed and perpetu- 
ated. We know that, in all other cases, the de- 
mand causes the supply, but in respect to the preach- 
ing of pure and holy doctrine, the clergyman him- 
self has to create the want which he comes to satisr 
9* 



98 MUCKAIRN. 

fy, so that, where instruction is most needed, it will 
be least acceptable. The most obsequious, subser- 
vient, and manoeuvring candidate will now, in all 
probability, cast a glamour over the poor people's 
minds ; and even in my own limited sphere of obser- 
vation, I have already known three flagrant instan- 
ces, where a tutor or a missionary has, at first, 
almost superseded the parish clergyman in his visi- 
tation round the district, but when at last promoted 
to the vacant pulpit, has become notoriously careless 
in that important respect, having been, to all ap- 
pearance, like Sixtus V., who only stooped to look 
for the keys of St. Peter. A patron has extensive 
means of information respecting the character, 
learning, and piety of those whom he takes the 
responsibility of appointing ; and though there have 
unhappily been many proprietors criminally reckless 
of the solemn choice they were called on to make, 
yet every institution in this world is so defective, 
that, in all cases, there can only bea choice of evils. 
Few would intrust the gift of a parish to any one 
among the peasantry or manufacturers, rather than ac- 
cept the choice of an educated and responsible patron, 
still less does it seem desirable that the selection 
should be committed to the whirlwind of a multi- 
tude, whose minds will be swayed, as much as at 
any other contested election, by stories and slanders 
against their opponents. I was amused, not long 



MUCKAJEN. 99 

ago, to hear of a hard-working gardener in an ob- 
scure Highland village, who was asked, why he 
voted against one of the candidates for that parish, 

when he replied, " I never heard of Mr. M till 

he came here, and, of course, if his preaching had 
been any way remarkable, his name would be bet- 
ter known !" In East Lothian, also, a young man, 
^\^lth the unanimous approbation of the parish, was 
chosen assistant to an old clergyman, but when the 
church became vacant, and he was appointed to 
succeed, he became rejected by a large majority. 
On the patroness expressing her surprise at this to a 
farmer, saying, because of his known popularity she 
had given him the living, he sharply replied, "Yes, 
Ma'am ! but yom- appointing him was the very rea- 
son we wad na' tak' him!" 

Perhaps the greatest misfortune of all in this 
new system may be, that the necessary qualification 
for voting is, to attend the sacrament during three 
years previously, which gives a new and unheard-of 
motive to careless, or even profane men, presump- 
tuously to partake of that holy ordinance. There 
can be httle doubt, that if the pri\dlege to vote for a 
member of Parliament could be obtained by similar 
means, the very worst people are those who would 
feel the least scruple in availing themselves of it 
pohtically ; and it is too probable, that even the 
terrors and solemnities of religion may not be suffi- 



100 MUCKAffiN. 

cienf to keep back those who are ambitious of 
power, in bestowing the charge of a pa;rish; for 
even in the most Christian congregations, a great 
deal of human natm-e still remains ; and if the privi- 
lege of popular election to a church be Divinely 
given, there certainly is no warrant added to exclude 
any from voting, whether communicants or not. 

Our Saviour sometimes foimd reason to check 
the keenness of his own apostles, when they zeal- 
ously contended for what they deemed essential to 
his glory, but what it was not his purpose to assume ; 
and I cannot but think that now there are men almost 
equally ardent, and almost equally single-hearted in 
their devotion to the cause of Christ, but who are 
equally exceeding their commission. We cannot 
bear a higher testimony to these venerated and 
excellent ministers, than to think, that the power 
which raised them to eminence in the Church must 
have had the blessing of God upon it ; and that no 
other system will select more spiritually-minded, judi- 
cious, or edifying pastors, to guide us unto all truth. 

But these are subjects so deeply serious and im- 
portant, that you and I are not likely to be con- 
sulted on them. Let us then hope, that while the 
utmost wisdom of man is now employed to rectify 
that question of Church government which has so 
greatly agitated the country, every Christian may 
unite to pray that the great and only Head of our 



MUCKAIRN. 101 

national Church ^\'ill Himself direct our minds as 
shall be most for His glory and for the good of all 
those whose fathers have worshipped during many 
generations in our national Church, and who would 
still rather pluck out a right eye from our Establish- 
ment, if the veto law can be considered one, than 
sacrifice the whole body of our venerable and sacred 
institution for a point of law w^hich no text of 
Scripture can be found to sanction. The sight of 
this desolate parish has made me write more on a 
public question than is perhaps allowable ; and you 

w^U be stopping me, saying, like Mrs. E , who 

heard another lady mention in company the beauty 
of Bonaparte's hand, " You know I hate politics !" 
I was amused lately to hear that a gentleman, who 
voted on what we think the wrong side of this ques- 
tion, apphed one day to a lady for the loan of some 
entertaining book to amuse his leisure during a short 
residence in the Highlands, so in order to rectify his 
opinions, she maliciously packed up that bulky vol- 
imie which has recently been published on " The 
Auchterarder Case !" Let us hope, during the 
next debate at the General Assembly, that we shall 
see the good it has done him. 

Nearly all young persons in the Highlands are 
now so accomplished as to speak two languages flu- 
ently. Those who are born to use the Gaelic tongue 
only, often start for Glasgow, the instant they have 



102 DUNSTAFFNAGE CASTLE. 

realized the necessary funds, to " get English ;" but 
with some elderly people, it is necessary still to use 
an interpreter; and I was amused to hear, that 
when a French abigail arrived lately among some 
Lowland servants, they brought an old Highland 
laundry-maid to associate with her, thinking that 
two persons, each so totally unintelligible, must 
surely comprehend one another. 

When the Highlanders observe any one out of 
doors in extremely bad weather, they say, " Ye're 
surely owre het at hame !" and certainly our case 
to-day looked rather suspicious when we drove 
along, during some hours, through an almost solid 
mass of mist and rain, closing the eye of observa- 
tion, and raising the mnbrella of protection. At last, 
however, a bit of blue sky, scarcely larger than a 
turquoise, made itself visible, and gradually the eve- 
ning cheered up and brightened, till we beheld the 
ruins of DunstafFnage Castle, with the sunbeams 
flitting over them, as rapidly and brilliantly as in 
any diorama. This was formerly a royal fortress, 
under guardianship of the Campbells ; but by some 
contrivance or other, it at last became their property, 
and now they have an established right of prescrip- 
tion for some centuries at least. It was not by 
deeds on parchment that possession was obtained, 
in the days of claymores, bagpipes, and dirks ; but 
" might was right" in those times when a stout old 



DUNOLLY CASTLE. 103 

Highland proprietor used to say, he would disdain 
'* to hold his lands in a sheep's skin." 

The only access to this fine old castle, situated 
on a perpendicular rock, nearly surrounded by the 
sea, is by a narrow outside stair, like a ladder, so 
that one man could defend the walls; and here tra- 
dition mentions that Robert Bruce once held a Par- 
hament, at which all the M. P.'s spoke Gaelic. 

We next caught a glimpse of Dunolly Castle, 
a finely situated place belonging to the very ancient 
fa^nily of M'Dougall of Lorn. In these antique 
towers, when guests were niunerous and provisions 
becamfe scarce, the chief of M'Dougall usually 
hoisted a table-cloth upon the battlements, which 
fluttered in the breeze, as a signal of distress, when 
iimnediately his clansmen flocked round him with 
offerings of fish and game, a most convenient ar- 
rangement for stocking the larder, which that fam- 
ily should never have chscontinued. 

In front of Dunolly Castle stands an isolated 
rock, called the Dog's Pillar, which rises abruptly 
out of the sea, forming a most picturesque natural 
steeple, the summit of which was formerly crowned 
by a fine well-grown tree, flourishing there most 
conspicuously until a fanciful young lady unfortu- 
nately dreamed one night that a treasure was buried 
beneath the root. Without a moment's delay she 
rose, bribed a gardener to escort her up the steep 



104 LIJSIHE LOCH. 

ascent, and after digging most zealously for some 
time, they at last succeeded — not in discovering the 
expected treasure, but — in bringing the old tree 
about their ears! 

Passing onwards, we gave a disapproving look 
at the island of Kerrera, where we saw nothing to 
admire, till we remembered, that though not veiy 
beautiful, it belongs to history, as Alexander the 
Second did it the honour to die there, when prepar- 
ing to lead an expedition against Macdonald, Lord 
of the Isles. In one respect the king's death was 
quite a romance in the old school, as, according to 
tradition, he saw three supernatural apparitiorft, who 
warned him against advancing ; but he rashly ne- 
glected their injunctions. 

The concourse of steam-boats at Oban is so 
great, that it has been called the Charing Cross of 
the Highlands ; but of all the noisy, confused, and 
mismanaged scenes I ever encoimtered, none can 
compare with that of our embarkation to proceed 
from thence to Fort-Wilham. All the numberless 
boats that touch at Oban are appointed to meet 
there at one particular hour, while of course wind 
and tide never periTiit one of them to keep time ex- 
actly. The assignation takes place like a fashiona- 
ble dinner party, where the most punctual suffer the 
whole inconvenience, weariness, and discomfort, 
while the latest arrivals are eagerly watched for, as 



LINHE LOCH. 105 

ail affair of supreme importance. Om* boat was the 
first to be ready, and we waited five hours, do not 
ask me whether patiently or impatiently, while all 
the briojht sunshine of a beautiful afternoon faded 
into darkness. We had hoped to see Linhe Loch 
under a blazing sun-set ; and now every house in 
Oban looked like a manufactory on fire, the windows 
all illuminated with the golden beams of departing 
light, while I watched tiU my eyes ached for the ex- 
pected vessels ; but after darkness had closed around, 
and all my hopes were extinguished of seeing Loch- 
nell, Airds, Appin, and the many fine places we were 
destined to pass by star-hght, the last tardy steam- 
boat arrived in full smoke, bellowing out a sort of 
apology for detaining us so long; and having re- 
ceived from the Helen Macgregor half her cargo and 
all her passengers, we set off, to grope our w^ay up 
the Loch, wnth a cold wind blowing in gusts down 
every glen. I wish we knew the agreeable art of 
extracting sunbeams from cucumbers ! 

Linhe Loch is so completely land-locked, that 
even if the wand blew double-reefed topsails else- 
where, the sea here could never be lashed into a 
respectable storm ; therefore I was privately much 
amused at one lady in the cabin, who remarked, with 
an ominous look, that " this boat had been always 
very unlucky, and we were now coming to the most 
dangerous part of the Loch!" 
10 



106 COPvAN FERRY. 

Coran Ferry has some local celebrity for its 
roughness, an amusing instance of which was men- 
tioned. A poor soldier's wife having embarked for 
America, exclaimed, with a look of unspeakable 
thankfulness, after passing it, " Are we safe through 
Coran Ferry 1 then the worst is over !" 

I am not intending to steep my pages in the 
bloody old traditions of long vanished years, when 
the Highland rivers ran red with gore, and the 
mountains echoed with cries ofveng-eance andslauo-h- 
ter ; for in many cases, the chronicle of a butcher's 
shambles would be almost as interesting ; but here 
and there you must submit to be told a few lono- 
" yarns," when they relate to any very characteris- 
tic incidents not generally known. 

A few miles beyond Coran Ferry is the site of 
an old castle, which once belonged to the M'Mas- 
ters, a clan very nearly extinguished by their neigh- 
bours the Macleans, one of whom, in ages past, ob- 
tained possession of those ancient walls in rather a 
(Questionable way. He was a bold, daring young 
soldier, singularly handsome, and on account 
of the plume he wore in his bonnet, obtained a 
nickname, which, in our day, would indicate any 
thing but the bravery for which he was distinguished, 
" Maclean of the white feather !" Having received 
no adequate reward for great services rendered to 
Macdonald, Lord of the Isles, lie began to ask, like 



CORAN FERRY. 107 

) our friend B , " what is the use of friends who 

are of no use ?" and having remonstrated angrily at 
being thus constantly overlooked, the " Island King" 
offered to place a troop of soldiers under his com- 
mand, that he might help himself to any estate he 
fancied, but whispered in his ear the very judicious 
advice, to " loup the lowest dike he coidd find !" 
Accordingly, Maclean attacked the feeble M'Mas- 
tei-s, whom he conquered and slew, seizing violent 
possession of all their property ; but the eldest son 
of that unfortunate chief escaped to Coran Ferry, 
and loudly shouted for the ferrj'man to row him 
across. The treacherous knave refused, and young 
JM'Master, having fled to a recess in the glen, was 
discovered and massacred on the spot, where now 
his cairn is still to be seen. Meanwhile the victo- 
rious Maclean hurried to Coran Ferry, where the 
boatman loudly boasted of the cruelty shown to his 
late master's son, but his auditor indignantly ordered 
the wretch to be hung upon his oars, saying, " If 
your old friends were treated so treacherously, how 
would you treat me, were I in equal extremity to- 
morrow !" Since then, if any act of bad faith 
meets with due retribution, it is called, in this neigh- 
bourhood, " Ferryman's justice." According to all 
the rules of romance, Maclean of the white feather 
should have lived miserably, and died some calami- 
tous death, as the punishment of his crimes, but it 



lUo COR AN FERRY. 

often interests and instructs me to observe, in actual 
life, how almost invariably justice is postponed for 
another world. In great things, as well as in trifles, 
there is no justice on earth ; and this is a solemn 
truth to remark. Men's motives and actions are 
continually misapprehended, the faults and follies of 
one person bring disgrace and sorrow on those w^ho 
have no share in them, evei-y individual is either 
over or under-estimated by the world, or even by his 
most intimate friends, and those who originate great 
discoveries are often deprived of the merit by others 
who merely adopt them. A man of arbitrary opin- 
ions in religion persuades himself and others that he 
is persecuted by those who merely differ from him ; 
a good tempered man undergoes the blame of begin- 
ning a quarrel which he has done all in his power 
to avoid ; and a superficial, ignorant man, often 
makes a better impression in society than one of the 
profoundest attainments. In short, it would be end- 
less to multiply proofs, that justice is not for this 
world, but for another and a better. 

During our progress up Loch Linhe, a boat was 
sent ashore at Appin, and, as usual on such occasions, 
became so completely overloaded, that I expected 
every instant to see it sink. You have probably 
seen children try how many shillings could be slipped 
into a glass of water after it seemed perfectly full, 
but the nicety required for that operation is nothing. 



APPIN. 109 

compared to the hurraing in oftrunks, baskets, boxes, 
and people, which takes place in any nutshell of a 
boat boarding a steaiu-vessel to land passengers. 
Among the last hurried voyagers who ventured into 
this medley, was a plainly dressed girl of the lower 
ranks, but one of the most perfect beauties I ever 
beheld. If it be interesting to atlmire a lovely pic- 
ture, how much more so to see a reality that excels 
all painting, as we did on this occasion ; for, though 
she appeared, like an apparition, only for an instant, 
I never shall forget the momentary vision. Her long 
black ringlets, which seemed to curl naturally, were 
blown about in rich profusion, her profile was per- 
fectly Grecian, she had eyes such as Cleopatra must 
have worn, and teeth like the pearls she melted in 
vinegar. I always suspected till now, when reading 
Burns' poems, that if we could have beheld the fair 
subjects of his song, something coarse or vulgar in 
their appearance would have dissolved the charm ; 
but this young beauty of Appin might reaUze our 
most refined expectations respecting " Highland 
Mary." What a sinking in poetry that w^as, when 
Lord Byron's " Maid of Athens" married a Scotch 
police officer, and became Mrs. Black ! 

Appin House is the seat of Mr. Downie, who 
had once also a seat in Parliament. The late Duke 
of Argyll used always to introduce that gentleman 
in society as being the proprietor of the most beau- 
tiful place in Scotland ; and the grounds seem 
10* 



110 BEN NEVIS. 

charming, though not shown oif to much advantage 
in the dark, as 1 merely descried a white house, ap- 
pearing like a ghost through the mist, and behind a 
dark mass of what we were credibly informed is fine 
wood, and beautiful park sceneiy. No place looks 
so well from the sea as elsewhere, because the undu- 
lating valleys and flat grounds are lost, and nothing 
is visible from beneath but a compressed view of 
the more prominent points and elevations. 

Long after midnight, we had a most comfortless 
arrival at Fort William, where the inn-keeper and 
his aids-de-camps were all unwillingly roused from 
their sleep to give us admission, and grumblingly 
opened a door, by \vhich we entered one of the 
worst inns I ever yet encountered. The windows 
were without shutters, the beds without curtains, the 
doors without bolts, the floors without carpets, and 
the candlesticks without extinguishers, but in the 
latter case we were expected perhaps to do like vis- 
iters in the great inns at Harrogate, who throw their 
candles out of the window at night, when done 
with them. King James said he had founded Fort 
William " to civilize the Highlands," but I wish he 
could have civilized the inn likewise, and diminished 
the parish, which is said to be sixty miles long. 

Near this we saw the steep sides of Ben Nevis, 
the summit of which is covered over with a shinino- 

o 

table-cloth of snow, and our host, who seemed to 
think, like Madam de Maintenon, that a story would 



FORT WILLIAM. Ill 

compensate for the want ot" a dinner, related at 
great length the adventure of the Duchess of Buc- 
clfuch and her friends, who lost their way last year, 
when ascending this hill, the name of which he 
always pronounced " Ben Knavish." This anecdote 
is evidently hi^ favourite subject of conversation, and 
after the tale has been circulated a few years longer, 
with the addition of as many wings, legs, and arms, 
as an incident of the kind usually acquires, it will 
grow by degrees into a veiy fine tradition, which 
might almost do for the stage, including a represen- 
tation of the farmer who went out to rescue the 
party, glimmering a lantern, and ringing a dinner- 
bell, to guide the wanderers into safer quarters. A 
young lady, whose friends were missing some time 
ago, under very alarming circumstances, expressed 
the greatest astonishment at seeing the consternation 
of those around, obsernng, as she drew her chair 
comfortably towards to fire, " At the very worst, you 
know, their bodies will be brought home !" 

After a short but comfortless sejour at Fort Wil- 
liam, we enjoyed the only pleasm-e that the inn 
there can afford to travellers, and that is, to get 
away. We were furnished with a drosky, drawn by 
the most miserable, perverse looking donkey of a 
horse I ever saw in harness. We should have re- 
c[uired a red hot poker to set him off, for he seemed 
as immoveable as the church steeple; but, never- 
theless, the hostler stood holding his head, as if he 



112 PORT WILLIAM. 

would run away the next moment, and assured me 
he was " a capital goer." As all the post-horses 
were already engaged, we resolved to try any expe- 
riment rather than delay our escape from Fort 
William, and proceeded forward at a funeral pace, 
the driver protesting that the animal, was only lazy 
and obstinate. I sat hoping the best for a mile or 
two, but became at last perfectly fatigued with 
seeing the postboy's efforts to get on, and alighted 
to walk the remaining five miles of our journey to 
Coran Ferry, wishing the driver would place his 
unhappy steed inside the carriage, and draw it on 
himself. Now, at last, we had leisure to enjoy the 
beauties of a most enchanting road, instead of suf- 
fering agonies of sympathy for a poor quadruped, 
probably dead before this time, or the owner ought 
to be prosecuted under Mr. Martin's act. It is 
painful to reflect, even for a moment, on all that 
mankind have to answer for, in the eye of a merciful 
Providence, for wanton, unprovoked cruelty towards 
the noble animals given for our use, but which are 
likewise intended evidently to partake of that felicity 
bestowed in so large a proportion on every living 
creature. Before Bunyan, of the Pilgrim's Progress, 
was converted, he once said, in a moment of despe- 
ration, that, " as hell would be filled with torment- 
ors and tormented, his only remaining hope was, 
that he might be one of the tormentors j" and there 
are many now living, who seem fitting themselves 



FORT W^LLIAM. 113 

for such an oflfice! Our lives here are a rehearsal, 
previous to our lives in eternity ; therefore we are 
to prepare, and exercise the good or the evil dispo- 
sitions, which are afterwards to be perfected in 
heaven or in hell. I sometimes think, how curious 
it would be, if our happiness in another world were 
proportioned to the happiness we occasion around 
us in this. Though a wiser and better dispensation 
be revealed, yet it would be useful occasionally to 
think, were such the case, what share of enjoyment 
we should ourselves be entitled to expect. A law- 
yer lately, travelling in the mail incog., remonstrated 
vehemently with the coachman for maltreating one 
of the leaders, when the driver inadvertently defended 
himself, saying, " Why, Sir ! he deserves it all, for 
I believe he was an attorney before he was a horse !" 
One consolation for the introduction of rail-roads is, 
that travellers, who are always in the greater hurry 
the less they have to do, may now rush about in 
coaches from place to place, with ceaseless velocity, 
and no longer incur the self-reproach of seeing 
what worn-tlown skeletons of horses await them at 
every stage, which are lashed into temporary activity 
for their use, foaming and gasping out their very 
lives with exhaustion, while death alone can ever 
bring them rest or ease. 

It has always appeared to me, that there are 
pleasures in the life of a landed proprietor, residing 
on his own estate, greater than any other station 



114 ARDGOWER. 

can afford ; and if you doubt it, examine the estate 
of Ardgower, one of the most beautifully situated 
places in Scotland, embellished with extensive 
woods, planted by the proprietor himself There 
the tenants seem all thriving, the labourers employ- 
ed, the children educated, and every thing bears 
obvious testimony to the active personal superin- 
tendence of a liberal and judicious landlord. The 
situation is magnificent at Ardgower, where Colonel 
Maclean has a circle of lofty mountains for his park 
wall. Loch Leven acts the part of a fish-pond, and 
Ben Nevis, crowned with perpetual snow, supplies 
the place of an ice-house. Here every proprietor 
might wish to emulate one, who, as far as it is pos- 
sible to walk on a long summer's day, sees every 
acre improved, and every individual benefited by 
his own unceasing care ; while the tenants, instead 
of being oppressed and neglected, have become at- 
tached diuing long years of personal intercourse and 
mutual kindness. I could expatiate at great length, 
on the pleasure of spreading happiness and prosper- 
ity around us, on every side, as we see it here ; but 
you know mine is a patent writing-desk, which re- 
mains open along the highroad, and shuts with a 
spring the moment I see any living individual, 
therefore it is now rapidly closing, and I have only 
time to bid you adieu, and to assure you, that, in 
society, we consider every circle, however agreea- 
ble, only a semicircle, unless you are of the party. 



ARDGOWER. 



Land of proud hearts, and mountains grey, 
Where Fingal fought, and Ossian sung. 

My Dear Cousin, — You are probably not too 
busy with yoiu- worsted work and Nicholas Nick- 
leby, to care for the continuation of our life and ad- 
ventures, during our north-west passage to Skye, 
which will probably occupy a hundred and one 
nights at least, though we have hurried so rapidly 
from post to pillar, in gigs, chaises, and ferry-boats, 
through a wilderness of mountains, rivers, bays, and 
straits, that I have scarcely found time to ask my- 
self how I do. We shall soon have occasion to 
sing, " Lochaber no more !" being about finally to 
leave this wild, beautiful, and hospitable neighbour- 
hood, where, having been promised a lease of 
giound for less than nothing, I am already building 
no less than thirty imaginary cottages. 

We yesterday (kove about twenty miles through 
the estate of Ardgower, along a road like a fine ap- 
proach, skirting Loch Linhe, adorned by trees, and 
displaying a distinct view of some charming, pros- 
perous-looking farm-houses, near one of which, 
M here a double glen branched off from the shore. 



116 ARDGOWER. 

we saw the place where the last true Highlander of 
the old school, Glengarry, was so unfortunately 
killed some years ago. The steamboat in which he 
and his family embarked struck on a rock we passed, 
so close to the shore, that there scarcely seemed 
reason to apprehend the slightest danger; but a 
sudden panic seized the passengers, who all hast- 
ened to land. Glengarry, accustomed to exercise 
the agility of a Celt, leaped out of the boat on a 
slippery rock, but fell forwards on his head, and 
fractured his skull, of which in a few hours he died. 
Glengarry was the intimate friend of Sir Walter 
Scott, and supplied him with many traits of High- 
land character, and with innumerable anecdotes of 
broadswords and claymores, several of which I have 
heard him relate with prodigious spirit, when he 
was dressed in his splendid Highland garb, to a 
circle of English strangers, who listened with eager 
interest, though their own countrymen were always 
sure to make a very indifferent appearance in his 
Celtic stories. After the last disastrous accident, 
seeing his family alarmed. Glengarry, who did not, 
according to the Scotch expression, " take death to 
hunself," calmly remarked, that he had survived 
many a heavier blow, but soon after fell into con- 
vulsions, and expired. 

You might live quite luxuriously on the cottage 
fare of this neighbourhood, and even Dr. Redgaunt- 



ARDGOWER. 117 

k-t or Sir William Curtis would scarcely have dis- 
dained to partake of " that excellent dish, pot-luck." 
1 lenings are caught in shoals by those who take 
the trouble, but all over Scotland a great indiffer- 
ence unfortunately exists among the common peo- 
jde about eating fish, which might be a source of 
so much abundance on their tables. Fuel may be 
had on the moors merely for cutting it, though an 
old woman remonstrated lately with one of the 
great landed proprietors in a tone of grave indigna- 
tion, saying, " If ye go on improving this way, what 
are we poor folk to do for peats ?" I hope they 
may all become rich enough to buy coals, but it cer- 
tainly may be a hardship, as the endurance of even 
hunger itself, bad as that is, may be rendered more 
tolerable, if the sufferers be only warm. 

The poor tenants in this part of Argyle^ire, by 
paying a rent of only £\0 a-year, become entitled 
to a comfortable cottage, and a little croft in which 
to grow potatoes, besides being allowed pasture for 
a cow, or for a couple of sheep. Who could wish 
for more ? None of them are puzzled, however, 
like the lady who consulted you, whether to keep a 
cow or a pianoforte. We have encountered neither 
beggars, pedlars, highwaymen, nor turnpikes, on 
any of these West Highland roads, therefore travel- 
lei-s might almost leave their purses at home without 
finding it out. I have only once, during our journey, 
11 



118 ARGYLESHIRE. 

been asked for charity, by a tidily dressed blind wo- 
man^ near Fort "William, and those who suffer under 
such a privation, are legitimate objects to relieve, 
"without any apprehension, as in some cases, that by 
giving sixpence, you do five shillings worth of harm. 
Begging has been introduced at many remote places 
by travellers thoughtlessly volunteering donations, 
which have accustomed people to the degradation 
of accepting alms, whereas the good old Scottish 
maxim should be maintained to the very last, " a 
shilling earned is worth two shillings begged." A 
nobleman in the Highlands, well known for his in- 
discriminate liberality, was one day remonstrated 
vdth by a friend for thus encouraging idleness and 
profligacy, by giving undeserving applicants more 
than an industrious man could earn by a hard day's 
labour, to which he merely replied, " If the poor 
creatures add vice to poverty, so much the worse for 
them !" It has been calculated that Oxford Street, 
well begged, is worth seven shillings a day, and for 
sweeping some of the crossings in the Strand, a 
larger income may be obtained, than for officiating 
in one of the London chapels. 

The women here generally spin and weave their 
own dresses, as well as the checked black and white 
plaid worn by their husbands, which looks so like a 
stone at some distance, that it makes the best of all 
shooting dresses for sportsmen to wear when deer- 



GAELIC. 1 19 

Stalking. Tartan is hardly ever worn here, and when 
any traveller appears equipped in it, the Highlanders 
exclaim, " There goes a fool or an Englishman !" 
I was amused to hear that, last year, when a Bishop 
appeared in the north, with his apron on, the coun- 
try people said, " What an extravagant man that is, 
to wear the kilt and the trews both at once !" Tar- 
tan is suspected to be by no means an ancient manu- 
facture, and kilts especially are comparatively modern, 
as neither the one nor the other are represented in 
any veiy ancient Scottish portraits, though opinions 
differ indeed, as to what constitutes antiquity. An 
old housekeeper was asked, not long ago, if the 
pictures she showed were very ancient, to which she 
emphatically replied, " That they are ! for to my 
certain knowledge they have been in the house 
these thirty years !" 

The Highlanders' partiality for their native lan- 
guage still continues prevalent here, and in a church 
where I saw a crowded congregation for the Gaelic 
service, the very few who remained to hear it in 
English, might all have walked out at the door 
abreast without jostling. A Gaelic psalm was af- 
terwards sung through the noses of the congregation, 
like a concert of Jew's-harps, which had a strange 
effect, but every individual unites his voice in the 
general chorus, which is a great advantage over 
many assemblies of better taught singers, where it 



120 GLENCOE. 

is sometimes much to be regretted, how few venture 
to throw in their note of praise. Knowing, as we 
do, that the melody of the heart is what alone ren- 
ders even the finest harmony acceptable, we should, 
on no account, withhold ourselves from joining in 
that which is the most important part of public wor- 
ship. The sermon is intended to teach us those 
sentiments and principles which tune our hearts to 
praise, the prayers are to ask for that sanctification 
of heart which may render our worship acceptable, 
but the nearest approach a congregation can make 
on earth, to the feelings of the angels in heaven, is, 
when they lift up their hearts with their voices in 
solemn, grateful, thankfulness to the Author of their 
being. So fully conscious were the old Cameroni- 
ans of this, that no personal danger could deter them 
from raising a full chorus in singing their psalms, 
so that frequently English soldiers were guided to 
,the dens and caves where those persecuted Chris- 
tians were concealed, when the still watches of the 
night were disturbed by a peal of melody, poured 
from the hearts of those who confidently suffered the 
whole will of God on earth, gratefully looking for 
the fulfilment of their highest hopes and wishes in a 
better world. 

To-day we resolved " to progress" through the 
celebrated Glencoe, and being unable to find a char- 
iot and four at the Ferry of Balachulish, we stepped 



GLENCOE. 121 

into an elegant green tax-cart, not furnished with 
the newest patent axle or springs, but nevertheless 
ver^' endurable, and committed ourselves to the 
guidance of an old ambling grey horse, whose paces 
would have made no great sensation at Tattersals, 
but perfectly suited our purpose of vie\ving at lei- 
suie the succession of magnificent landscapes, claim- 
ing our admiration along Loch Leven — not Queen 
Mary's Loch Leven, but another much more beau- 
tiful, an arm of the sea, or rather, a mere finger, as 
it is so narrow, that those who live on the banks 
often cross and recross it four times in one day to 
pay visits. 

The pass of Glencoe has one great advantage 
over its Welsh rival Llanberris, that here a deeply 
tragical catastrophe actually took place, such as 
those ferocious mountains appear formed on purpose 
to witness. You might fancy that a funeral pall 
liad been thrown over their dark and rugged forms 
ever since the massacre, and that the wind howling 
over their shattered summits was the ciy of the 
murdered Macdonalds, not yet laid at rest, and call- 
ing down vengeance on their treacherous visiters. 

When our guide awakened the echoes with a 
shout, it reminded me how those rocks and glens 
had once repeated the cries of many vainly asking 
for mercy, and that the last sigh of the brave High- 
landers had been breathed on the spot where we 
11* 



122 GLENCOE. 

Stood. The Campbells should carry their arms re- 
versed whenever they pass through this dark scene 
of their treachery. It appears that Lord Breadal- 
bane concealed from King William that the Mac- 
donalds had submitted to his government, having 
found them rather untractable respecting a sum of 
j£20,000 with which he had himself been intrusted 
for distribution among the chiefs. When asked, 
some time afterwards, to account for this public 
money thus intrusted to him, he merely replied, 
" The money is spent, — the Highlands are quiet, — 
and this is the only way of accounting among 
friends !" Meantime, Captain Campbell of Glen- 
lyon, the leader employed on this occasion, was 
nearly connected with Macdonald of Glencoe, and 
arrived at his house on pretext of paying a friendly 
visit, accompanied by a detachment of his troops, 
who seem all to have been most hospitably enter- 
tained, and to have spent a fortnight very agreeably, 
in eating, drinking, playing at cards, and associating 
on friendly terms with their intended victims. Fon- 
tenelle says, that " the way to live long in this 
world is, to have a good stomach and a bad heart," 
both of which the guests at Glencoe seem to have 
had in an eminent degree, as they partook of a 
hearty supper with their hosts before proceeding to 
business. It is difficult for ordinary minds to ima- 
gine how a man would feel, carrying an order in 



GLENCOE. 123 

his pocket for the total massacre of a pleasant fam- 
ily circle, with which he had been some time do- 
mesticated ; but the position is fortunately not a 
common one. In the silence of midnight, when 
their unsuspicious host was asleep, Captain Camp- 
bell and his men, fearing the extraordinary bodily 
strength for which Macdonald was distinguished, 
stole into his room like cowardly banditti, and 
poured a simultaneous volley of shot into his breast 
while he slumbered, thus hurrj'ing him unprepared 
into the long sleep of death. An indiscriminate 
slaughter then ensued, of eight and thirty individu- 
als, all unarmed and defenceless, while some of the 
more active escaped by flight. Many women, who 
had mshed out on the hills carrying children in their 
arms, perished that night from extreme cold, and 
we may adapt the lines of Campbell to this occa- 
sion, — 

" The snow became their winding-sheet, 
And many a turf beneath tlieir feet 
Became a soldier's sepulchre." 

It is almost a satisfaction to know, that Camp- 
bell of Glenlyon afterwards felt agonies of remorse, 
and retired from the army in deep despondency. 
Having been appointed to superintend the execu- 
tion of a soldier, for whom he was desired at the 
very last moment to produce a reprieve, he drew it 



124 GLENCOE. 

from his pocket in so much haste, that his handker- 
chief dropped, which was the signal previously ap- 
pointed for firing, and before he could speak, the 
unfortunate criminal was no more. In great horror 
of mind he retired from the army immediately, say- 
ing, " The curse of Glencoe is upon me !" Such a 
sudden and complete consciousness of retribution is 
indeed awful, and I often think there could scarcely 
be a greater punishment for wicked men, than being 
obliged to live their lives over again, not mere- 
ly with an entire sense of their guilt and folly, for- 
cing them to see at every step, as an angel might 
do, how fearfully they were mistaking the way to 
happiness ; but also, that they should be thoroughly 
known to each friend with whom they associated, 
every motive, intention, wish, and feeling stripped 
of all disguise, and clearly read, as if they lived in 
the Palace of Truth. How important a check would 
be laid on the conduct of men, even in trifles, if they 
could think of the shame with which it would cover 
them, could the companion wdth whom they are as- 
sociating become suddenly aware that he was an 
object of ridicule instead of respect ; or if the heir, 
watching with assiduous attention by the sick-bed 
of a dying relative, could be seen inwardly calcula- 
ting the probable amount of his succession ; or if, 
when we are attending reverently in appearance to 
the service in church, it were to become suddenly 



GLENCOE. 125 

known to the preacher and congregation, that our 
thoughts were really wandering upon the moun- 
tains of a thousand vanities ! If the festivities of 
Glencoe were again to be acted over, wdth a mutual 
consciousness of secret hatred and approaching 
treachery, could we imagine any penance more 
painful to even the hard and cold-hearted Glenlyon ! 
Such a consciousness respecting our own actions, 
and such a knowledge of secret thoughts in the 
minds of others, will take place at the day of judg- 
ment ; and it would be well now if we could fre- 
quently pause to examine how our thoughts and ac- 
tions mil then stand the scrutiny of our own aw^a- 
kened consciences, as well as of an assembled world, 
and a righteous Judge. 

Among the savage mountains of Glencoe Ossian 
was born, if ever he was born at all, which some 
])eople doubt. How wearied every mortal is of the 
argument, whether " Fingal lived, or Ossian sung," 
but I can only say on this subject, like the prime 
minister in Tom Thumb, " as near as I can guess I 
cannot tell I" Even the admirable Crichton, who 
challenged the whole w^orld to argue with him 
" upon every subject knowable," would probably 
have been satisfied to consider this as one of those 
secrets in the world that we must live and die in 
ignorance of. Ossian is now, to use his own lan- 
guage, " like a beam that has shone, like a mist that 



126 GLENCOE. ' 

has fled. His voice is heard no more, his days are 
with the years that are passed, and the halls of his 
father have forgotten his steps." These poems, 
whatever be their origin, have many eager admirers, 
and were the only verses that Bonaparte ever seems 
to have liked, perhaps approving of the poet's ad- 
vice, " Be a stream of many tides against the foes 
of thy people, but like the gale that moves the 
grass to those who are thy friends." 

Ossian's cave, one of the most striking objects 
in Glencoe, looks like a lion's den, excavated in the 
centre of a precipice, and is nearly inaccessible to 
the foot of man. One enterprising shepherd formerly 
scrambled high enough to reach his hand in, and 
pluck a tuft of grass. Tradition says, too, that a 
man actually did succeed in getting in, but has 
never since been heard of ; therefore some people 
say he is dead, others that he is alive, but, for my 
part, like the Irishman, I believe he is neither the one 
nor the other. 

There was an old woman thai liv'd on a hill, 
And if she's not gone, she is living there still. 

I had been advised to go all the way up Glencoe 
with my eyes shut, because the effect is more im- 
pressive in coming down ; but curiosity prevailed, 
and after examining each way with equal delight, I 
could have exclaimed, like King James when listen- 



GLENCOE. 127 

ing to an argument, " They are both right !" No 
one can go wrong in Glencoe, unless by losing his 
way, which a poor shepherd did lately, and perished 
among the precipices. 

Two very remarkable hills, whirling high into 
the clouds like tall spires, or cupolas, are called the 
old man and the old woman, being not unlike gi- 
gantic ghosts clothed in dark floating draperies, 
with white streamers of snow. As we advanced 
among new pyramids of hills, not a blade of grass 
enlivened their towering smnmits, which were as 
bare and black as vitrified forts. The entrance to 
this " vale of shadows" is guarded by a lion-shaped 
mountain, which seemed growing into life as we 
advanced. Its sides were seamed and furrowed by 
torrents, while the next mountain, by w^ay of con- 
trast, was round and shapeless as a haggis, but all 
appeared so steep, bare, black, and inaccessible, 
that, when asked if there were any earthly object for 
which I would undertake to surmount them, the very 
idea of attempting it made me giddy. 

We met, near the house of Glencoe, a very in- 
telligent flne looking Highlander, named Alan Mac- 
(lonald, whose ancestor escaped from the scene of 
carnage. He pointed out a steep hill, where one 
of the few Macdonalds who smvived the massacre, 
afler being pursued by a soldier, reached a place of 
safety ; and it was amusing to observe the look of 



128 GLENCOE. 

glee with which our friend finished the story of his 
clansman's flight by saying, "He carried a gun 
below his oxter, so he just wheeled round and shot 
the sodger." 

Alan Macdonald, who was a common wood- 
cutter, pointed out several of the localities, and told 
so many interesting circiunstances, that A , be- 
fore taking leave, presented him with a suitable 
donation, but in a truly Highland spirit of inde- 
pendence, he drew back, saying, " I want no money, 
Sir ! — but I would just hke to know who the gentle- 
man is I am speaking to?" 

Near this glen we met the farmer named Mac- 
donald, who lately became bankrupt for J640,000, 
involving all the poor people aroimd, who had in- 
trusted him with their money, in one common ruin. 
It seemed almost a pity his ancestor escaped the 
massacre ! He strode with a consequential step, 
and inhabits a good house, surrounded by a capital 
garden, while the unhappy creditors exist as they 
best can. The sum was a prodigious one for any 
person in his line of life to hazard ; and we thought 
of the Cardinal de Rohan, in former times, announc- 
ing, that one of his own relations had failed for a 
million of money, when he added in a tone of exul- 
tation, " That was a bankruptcy worthy of a Rohan !" 
It appears as if there must be some great defect in 
our laws and customs with respect to a failure, as 



GLENCOE. ]'2& 

any debtor, who chooses to throw aside principle 
and morahty, may gain a complete triumph over 
his creditoi-s. He lodges his money in some assumed 
name, pleads an insolvency, gets himself, in tech- 
nical phrase, " white-washed," and comes forth, as 
welcome in society as ever, and possessing some un- 
acknowletlged means of supporting extravagance, 
A\ hich is considered perfectly respectable, and made 
the subject of many amusing jests among his friends. 
One instance of this occurred some time since, when 
a poor cretiitor succeeded, with great difficulty, in 
forcing his way to the presence of a gentleman, who 
had long owed him a small bill, which he pleaded 
hard to have paid immediately, adding, that he had 
struggled through difficulties as long as possible, 
but feared now, if the whole amount were not dis- 
charged, he must inevitably break ! 

" Break !" said his auditor. " The very best thing 
you can do ! Everybody breaks! I broke myself! 
Go home and break as fast as you can !" 

When leaving Glencoe, our minds filled with 
recollections of murder, massacre, and banditti, we 
turned a shaip corner of the road, and I was startled 
to perceive a party of men advancing, armed with 
pistols. They came straight towards us in a body, 
and I had only time to calculate how many notes 
were in my purse, when the whole tioop touched 
their hats and passed on. This tinned out to be a 
12 



130 GLENCOE. 

party of excisemen going to seize contraband whis- 
key, a service of no small difficulty and danger. 
Nothing can be more ingenious than the contriv- 
ances by which Highlanders manage to conceal 
small stills for manufacturing their favourite " vin du 
pays," though sometimes the secret is betrayed, 
when cattle are attracted to the spot by a smell of 
grain. The most popular whiskey is made clan- 
destinely, without a goverrmient license, and goes by 
the name of " moonlight," while that which pays 
duty is called " daylight," and is considered so con- 
temptibly inferior, that even His Majesty George 
IV., during his residence in Edinburgh, drank the 
" mountain dew," in preference to the " Parliament 
whiskey." One very small "still" was discovered 
in the Highlands last year, with the boiler buried 
beneath a stone gate-post, which had been hollowed 
out for the chimney; and another was detected 
within the precincts of a Roman Catholic chapel, 
where the priest connived at the trick, and sold 
whiskey to a gentleman, who mentioned the circum- 
stance, under the name of" holy water." 

Near Glencoe there used formerly to be a Ro- 
man Catholic Bishop of Lismore, who presided over 
a nimierous flock ; but that sect is almost extinct now 
in this neighbourhood, though we passed one small 
Popish chapel, no larger than a barn, surmounted 
by two black wooden crosses. It is to be regretted 



CALEDONIAN CANAL. 131 

that our Protestant churches rehnquish the cross to 
be exclusively the badge of a Roman Catholic edi- 
fice, seeing that it would be an equally appropriate 
symbol on our own sacred buildings ; but the con- 
cession seems injudicious, as well as the custom of 
calling Papists by the name of " Catholics," as I 
have known several young persons, who thought, 
from its not having been properly explained, that 
any Protestant made a profession of apostacy who 
repeated that clause in the Creed, " I believe in the 
Holy Catholic Church." One great safeguard of 
Scotland against the Popish faith is, that this coun- 
try is too poor for again setting up so expensive a 
religion. 

You would have been pleased to observe, that 
the horse we employed here, as well as in some other 
Highland places, always endeavoured to stop when 
we approached the Chm-ch, being evidently accus- 
tomed to carry their employers regularly there ; and 
on one occasion we were nearly upset before the 
worthy quadruped could be prevailed on to proceed. 
In many more remote places the highroad termi- 
nates at the church door. 

Benavie Inn, at the head of the Caledonian Ca- 
nal, was our next point, where we landed in a boat, 
and hastened to visit Inverlochy Castle, a roofless 
ruin, age unknown, recently purchased by the Mar- 
quis of Huntly, and said to have been the original 



132 INVERLOCHY CASTLE. 

model from which Inverary Castle was copied. 
There may be some slight family likeness between 
them, as the same massy round towers are built at 
the four corners of each, but, in the more ancient 
edifice, the windows are so shapeless and irregular, 
that you might fancy the walls had been originally 
a solid mass, nine feet thick, and that cannon balls 
had been fired through them by the inhabitants, 
where an orifice was required at which they might 
see and breathe. This fortress has once been sur- 
rounded by a moat, and it sported a drawbridge 
formerly ; but while nature smiled around this vene- 
rable castle in perpetual youth, all that was the 
work of man has mouldered in decay, and is hasten- 
ing into oblivion. Great pains have been recently 
taken to preserve this interesting specimen of anti- 
quity, and I wish all castles fell into the hands of 
those who venerate their declining years as much, 
A wall has now been raised all round for protection, 
guarded by an iron gate, the key of which is in 
custody of a warden, who apparently retires to rest, 
like the chickens, at sunset, as we were told about 
six in the evening, that he must not be disturbed to 
give us admission, A boy, seeing our disappoint- 
ment, advised us, as a matter of course, to " loup 
the dike," apparently considering that mode of en- 
trance as the easiest and most usual. The walls not 
being totally impregnable, but rather in the style of 



INVERLOCHY CASTLE. 133 

those built by Romulus, A made his way good, 

and found within the enclosure a thriving young 
plantation of trees, which may hereafter become very 
ornamental. We were told, that money had been 
borrowed at four per cent, to purchase this very an- 
cient place, which yields only two, — which will re- 
mind you of the learned lawyer, who said, " land is 
principal without interest, — money in the funds is 
interest without principal, — but heritable bonds are 
both the one and the other !" 

Recollections of ancient and modern heroes are 
crowded round this interesting spot. Here Alan Earl 
of Caithness, who must have wandered a long way 
for the occasion, was killed in battle by Lord Mar 
in 1427. Here the Marquis of Argyll, upon his own 
territory, was defeated by " the chivalrous Montrose," 
who took his enemy by surprise, killing 1500 Camp- 
bells, while he lost only three men himself, — and in 
the neighbourhood also we observed a handsome 
monument visible many miles around, built by Sir 
Duncan Cameron to the memory of his brave and 
gallant son, killed at Waterloo, and who is comme- 
morated by Sir Walter Scott in these lines, — 

" And Cameron with his heart of steel, 
Died like the offspring of Locheil." 

On a wide moor which we crossed in returning to 

Bena\ie, the poor people had been cutting their 

12* 



134 mVERLOCHY. 

staple commodity, peats, leaving the whole field 
excavated into oblong squares, as if they had been 
ready made graves. The faint glimmer of twilight 
made the evening sky look like a rose leaf, the world 
was rapidly losing itself in darkness, and as we 
hurried on, I could not but think how easily we 
might have been murdered and buried there without 
the possibility of ever being discovered. Whether 
this melancholy catastrophe occurred or not, I must 
leave you to guess, for here ends my tale. 

( To be continued in our next.) 



LOCHEIL. 



Long have I pin'd for thee, 
Land of my infancy ! 
Now will I kneel on thee, 

Hillof Locheil. 
Hill of the sturdy steer, 
Hill of the roe and deer, 
Hill of the streamlet clear, 

I love thee well. 

My dear Cousin, — What could Madame de Stael 
mean by giving her verdict that a journey is " vn 
des plus tristes plaisirs de la vie ! /" On the con- 
trary, nothing appears to me so enhvening, the very 
discomforts being so transient, they seem only worth 
laughing at, while they give a greater zest to the 
enjoyment that follows, for what the poet says of 
life, is much more applicable to travelling, — 

" The pleasures stay not till they pall. 
And all the pains are quickly past." 

We are now in Locheil's country, where any one 
who wishes for a good travelling name should adopt 
that of Cameron, as every alternate man he meets 
will bear the same designation. Scotland was di- 
vided into compartments like the Zoological Gar- 
dens formerly, where the clans remained as com- 



136 THE CAMERONS. 

pletely separated, as if they had been of a different 

genus or caste, and even to this hour, when A 

meets with any one of the lower orders not in his 
proper district, a Fraser settled out of Inverness- 
shire, a Gordon absent from Aberdeenshire, or a 
Ross or Monro wandered from Ross-shire, he gener- 
ally asks how his family happened to go astray, and 
receives some long apologetic history about their 
proprietors having been beguiled away, from their 
" local habitation and their name," to new scenes 
and connections. The Island of Skye is so exclu- 
sively inhabited by Macdonalds, Mackinnons, and 
Macleods, that it might be appropriately named 
All-Macks, for if a stranger were in want of assist- 
ance, near any house or village, he need only call 
out " Mac !" and a head would instantly appear at 
every window. 

After breakfasting at Benavie, we set off in a 
gig, having the advantage of a blazing sunshine 
lighting us on our way, to take a glimpse of Auch- 
nacarry, belonging to the chief of all the Camerons. 
Our drive began through a dreary country, com- 
mencing along the banks of the Caledonian Canal. 
Here steam-boats and small frigates advance tediously 
through twenty-eight locks, commonly called " Nep- 
tune's staircase," as they are used in raising vessels 
going to Inverness to the level of Loch Lochy, the 
one being about ninety feet higher than the other. 



THE CAMERONS. 137 

This process is exceedingly tedious, occupying about 
eight hours to a mile, which is, in these railway 
days, a perfect lifetime, but afterwards the remain- 
ing sixty miles of this canal, almost reaching the 
gates of our Highland capital, may be performed at 
a good steamboat pace, leading through some of the 
most splendid scenery in Scotland. 

The Highlanders, accustomed only to warfare, 
scarcely knew what industry meant, until the Cale- 
donian Canal was begun, and though it cost a rail- 
lion of money, that price has been more than repaid 
by the spirit of exertion and activity which it intro- 
duced among the natives. They used at first to look 
on with indolent contempt, while Irish labourers 
dug and excavated the ground, but gradually one 
or two at a time volunteered to wield the spade, and 
were delighted to receive the two and sixpence al- 
lowed for their day's work. After a short interval 
employed in spending it, they generally returned, 
bringing a troop of friends willing to try the same 
experiment, and at last the whole population rose 
simultaneously, shouldered their spades, and enlisted 
in the service. Since then, instead of the despond- 
ing inertness caused by hopeless poverty-, the High- 
landers have become so active and enterprising, that 
no less than 5000 from this immediate neighbour- 
hood are working on different railways, who might 
all be thus comfortably maintained, were it not for 



138 THE CAMERONS. 

their extreme partiality to the herring fishery, which 
causes them annually to relinquish the most advan- 
tageous situations, in order to try their fortune at 
sea. It must be an animating sight, when the little 
squadron of fishing boats is sprinkled over the frith, 
surrounded by an army of sea-gulls, while a whole 
nation of fish arrives sometimes at once, covering 
several hundred acres of the ocean, and in such a 
solid depth, that a shoal has been sometimes called 
" a herring mountain." 

Not far from the canal, we passed the spot 
where, fifty years since, a fatal duel was fought, 
quite in the Chalk -farm style, between two of the 
clan Cameron, one of whom was killed, and the 
other fled the country. The fugitive afterwards be- 
came a general in the army, and was well known 
in London as Sir Alan Cameron, whose shake of the 
hand was so unbearably energetic, that his friends 
never left him without tears in their eyes ; and on 
one occasion, a gentleman who had frequently suf- 
fered under his grasp, jocularly held out his foot, 
when Sir Alan seized hold of it, and made him hop 
all the way down Bond Street. 

Pursuing our course, we observed, on the edge 
of Loch Lochy, or, I should rather perhaps say, in 
the Lake, all that remains of an old castle once in- 
habited by the chieftain of Mackintosh, a gentleman 
who seems to have entertained rather peculiar no- 



THE C.^MERONS. 139 

tions of hospitality, the entrance to his state cham- 
ber being across a concealed trap-door, which he 
occasionally left unfastened when an unwelcome 
visiter approached. Thus, instead of merely saying 
" not at home" as we do, he dropped his acquaint- 
ances into a deep abyss of the lake, where they 
were never heard of more ! At length he once in- 
vited his rival chief and neighbour, Locheil, to take 
pot-luck with him, and at the appointed hour, that 
brave and gallant officer, unsuspicious of treachery, 
was seen approaching the castle, accompanied only 
by a favourite dog. Fortunately the animal rushed 
on in advance of his master, the trap-door dropped, 
and Locheil seeing the yawning chasm at his feet, 
instantly guessed the w'hole plot. Filled with indig- 
nation, he leaped across the gulf, and with a single 
stroke of the broad-sword, laid his enemy dead at 
his feet. 

Some people say, and any body may believe it 
who can, that this old remnant of a castle on Loch 
Lochy was formerly the residence of Banquo, whose 
ghost may still be seen frequenting a trap-door at 
Covent Garden or Drury Lane. 

The Camerons of Locheil were a noble race, 
full of tnje Highland spirit, the last chiefs who ca- 
pitulated to Cromwell, and the first to rise again for 
Charles Edward. I gazed with deep interest on 
that one shattered wall yet remaining of the old 
Castle. It ought to be carefully preserved, as a 



140 THE CAMERONS. 

relic of almost fabulous times, when successive gen- 
erations of brave and loyal chieftains reigned with 
despotic rule over a devoted clan. There Prince 
Charles rehearsed the plan of his campaign in 1745, 
while Locheil, the most accomplished and talented 
of all his Highland adherents, knowing how despe- 
rate were the fortunes of his hereditary sovereign, 
still yielded his own better judgment, consenting to 
risk all, and, as he foresaw, to lose all, at the com- 
mand of one to whom he thought his allegiance 
justly due, especially when Charles Edward, as a 
last expedient for overcoming his reluctance, taunted 
him in these memorable words, " Locheil, who, my 
father has often told me, was our fomest friend, may 
stay at home, and learn from the newspapers the 
fate of his prince." 

The disastrous result of that brave chief's adhe- 
rence to the Stuarts is finely desciibed by Campbell, 
in language which that poet ascribes to the bold 
Locheil himself, whom he terms the " Proud bird of 
the mountain." He is supposed to make this cha- 
racteristic and spirited manifesto : 

" Thongh my perishing ranks should be strew'd in their gore, 
Like ocean-weeds heap'd on the surf-beaten shore, 
Locheil, untainted by flight or by chains, 
While the kindling of life in his bosom remains. 
Shall victor exult, or in death be laid low, 
With his back to the field, and his feet to the foe ! 
And, leaving in battle no blot on his name, 
Look proudly to Heav'n from the death-bed of fame." 



THE CAMERONS. 141 

Reason and religion teach us to rejoice that the 
Stuarts eventually lost their cause, and make us feel 
cT-ateful to Providence for establishino; a race of 
sovereigns, who, being chosen for their adherence 
to the Protestant cause, are thus pledged by a sacred 
tie to preserve it pure and undefiled, and to defend 
us from that Popish supremacy, the mere apprehen- 
sion of which caused the more ancient dynasty to be 
set aside. Yet while duty and principle are enlisted 
in the more orthodox cause, poetry and romance 
range themselves pow^erfully, beside the music of all 
our most spirited Scottish airs, on the side of " Bon- 
nie Prince Charlie !" While advancing, as we now 
did, through these glens and mountains, where, 
friendless and alone, the young adventurer was re- 
ceived with the same chivalrous enthusiasm as if he 
had come with the retinue and splendour of a hun- 
dred sovereigns, I did feel that a tribute of admira- 
tion and of sympathy might be given to the memory 
of those brave men, who so generously placed their 
lives, fortunes, and property, at the hazard of so 
desperate an enterprise. If Charles Edward had 
been killed at Culloden, and Bonaparte at Waterloo, 
they might both have ranked with any heroes in 
antiquity; but the appearance of each among his 
adherents was equally successful at first, equally ca- 
lamitous to all who welcomed his return, and like- 
wise followed by a similar loss of dignity and repu- 
tation in subsequent banishment. 
13 



142 THE CAMERONS. 

At Auchnacarry, an obliging English game- 
keeper, recently imported, as he told me, from 
" Coomherland" showed us Prince Charles's gmi, a 
remarkably long, overgrown-looking implement, 
for which he evidently entertained considerable con- 
tempt; and perhaps Manton might have suggested 
some improvement. It is double-barrelled, with one 
lock, and bears a Latin inscription, recommending 
us not to sink under our misfortunes, but to struggle 
against them. 

Every tree in the avenue to this old castle was 
separately set on fire by the English army in forty- 
five, and the trunks continue still to look scorched 
and blackened, though the leaves flourish green 
above, so that a careless observer might not detect 
the cruel havoc within, as the wounds are healing 
rapidly, and the hollow hearts of many are almost 
concealed, while others are as empty as telescopes. 
Here we observed a large collection of trees, chiefly 
horn-beams, ranged in two almost solid rows, as 
closely huddled as sheep during a thunderstorm ; 
and our cicerone mentioned that when Prince 
Charles landed, Locheil had been preparing to make 
some extensive plantations, but hearing of so sudden 
a call from civil to military employment, he thrust 
this young forest hastily into the earth, hoping to 
take an early opportunity of dispersing them more 
advantageously afterwards, but he was himself dis- 
persed with his clansmen, and the trees have ever 



THE CAMERONS. 143 

since remained, thus arm-in-arm, clinging to each 
other in a most distressing manner, and getting only a 
stray sun-beam occasionally to divide amongst them. 

" Oh ! crested Locheil ! the peerless in might, 
Whose banners arise on the battlement's height, 
Heav'n's fire is around thee, to blast and to burn. 
Return to thy dwelling! all lonely return! 
For the blackness of ashes shall mark where it stood." 

One of the drives at Auchnacarry is picturesquely 
called " The dark mile," a narrow pass, once over- 
shadowed like a bower, by well-grown trees, and 
beset by ranges of gloomy frowning hills, two rocky 
eminences in which are haunted by fairies. Our 
Highland guide informed me, with a superstitious 
shake of the head, that nobody could venture to pass 
that way after dusk, because " whisperings might be 
heard all through the forest !" Probably a whisper- 
ing breeze ; but we looked as credulous as we con- 
scientiously could, which encom-aged him to relate " a 
perfectly true stoiy," as follows : — Not many years 
since, a countryman was returning home, late one 
evening from the market, "wath a burden on his back, 
and reluctantly ventured into " the dark mile," though 
aware of his danger. After proceeding some dis- 
tance he was startled to behold a gigantic apparition 
standing on the pinnacle of a rock, and imperatively 
desiring him to drop what he carried. Scarcely had 
the terrified mortal time to consider the eligibility of 



144 LOCH ARCAIG. 

obeying this mandate, before another spirit appeared 
on the opposite hill, desiring him " to keep his own 
and pass on." Instantly a fierce conflict ensued be- 
tween the rival goblins, during which, without wait- 
ing to ascertain how his protector fared, the travel- 
ler ran off, which seems rather an ungrateful step, 
but he was not ashamed to relate the adventure, and 
it has one excellent effect, that being now quite 
current among the peasantry, they all remain at 
home in the evenings, when otherwise there might 
be abundant inducement to poaching, since this 
neighbourhood abounds in red deer, black game, 
and wild fowl. 

In days of yore, when the chief of Locheil had 
to be as ready for defensive as for offensive warfare,^ 
the family residence was where the family burying- 
ground is now, on a small wooded tuft of an island 
in Loch Arcaig. An ancient chieftain of the family, 
when embarking once from this green isle to present 
himself at Court, accidentally dropped one of the 
splendid golden shoes in which he had intended 
to be equipped for the occasion, and it has never 
yet been found. He was carrying them in his hand, 
a truly Caledonian mode of wearing shoes, not yet 
entirely disused. 

Loch Arcaig is a narrow, serpentine lake, eigh- 
teen miles in length, and bounded by a waving out- 
line of hills, which are chequered with native birch 



LOCH ARCAIG. 145 

and fir-trees. Beautiful as you may suppose this to 
be, the most enchanting feature in the whole scenery 
is derived from the glittering transparent brightness 
of the waters in Loch Arcaig. 

Like any fair lake that the breeze is upon, 

When it breaks into dimples, and laughs in the sun. 

I scarcely believed the beauty of this fairy-like 
scene could have been excelled, till we reached the 
river Arcaig, which nearly surrounds the new house, 
but there I could have gazed unceasingly into the 
clear depths of liquid crystal, through which we 
traced a gay medley of brilliant stones, looking like 
the fruit in Aladdin's garden, blue, yellow, and white, 
while w^e achnired especially a profusion of red peb- 
bles, which gave an appearance to the channel as if 
it were strewed with rubies. Its sparkling torrent, 
fresh from the mountain, reflects eveiy sunbeam in 
its shining course, like a flickering net-work of gold, 
so brilliant, that our eyes w^ere almost put out by the 
glare. As a burned child dreads the fire, the Came- 
rons of Locheil, long after the conflagration of 1746, 
brought their modern mansion so near the stream, 
that the foundation is almost washed by its waters. 
The house is a mere matter-of-fact building, with- 
out architectural ornaments or vagaries of any kind, 
but spacious and comfortable, being the third gene- 
ration of castles that has arisen under the Locheil 
dynasty. The walls were finished by the late pro-» 
13* 



146 LOCHEIL. 

prietor, but when the windows and doors were about 
to be inserted, he suddenly went abroad, leaving the 
house, during thirty-five years, an untimely ruin. 
The present chief has at length trimmed the edifice 
with sashes, shutters, and doors, so that the house 
now looks habitable, though not yet inhabited, and 
the rooms are adorned with elegant modern fui'ni- 
ture. Such sofas and ottomans would have electri- 
fied the ancient Locheil, of whom a story is related, 
that, when his son was about to bivouac in a field 
during the winter, and rolled up a pillow of 
snow to recline upon, the aged chief kicked it from 
under his head, angrily exclaiming, " You grow ef- 
feminate. Sir !" 

The day was delightful for enjoying this lovely 
place, — not a cloud in the azure sky larger than a 
powder puff, except one little wreath that rested on 
Ben Nevis, looking as if z-feu dejoie of cannon had 
been fired from the mountain to celebrate our arri- 
val. Its towering summit, rendered pie-bald with 
snow, contrasted beautifully with the bright suimner 
foliage, the lively " trotting brook," and the deep 
shadows around. K I were mean enough to envy 
any body, it would certainly be the owner of a place, 
so full of natural beauty, of historical recollections, 
and of romantic traditions; but you will think I am 
puffing off this place like an auctioneer, though I 
hope it will never again be in any sense knocked 
down. 



CLANS. 



The pibroch's note, discountenanced or mute, 
The Roman kilt degraded to a toy, 
Of quaint apparel for a half-spoilt boy, 
The target mouldering like ungathered fruit, 
The smoking steam-boat eager in pursuit, 
As eagerly pursued, the umbrella spread 
To weather-fend the Celtic herdsman's head. 
All speak of manners withering to the root. 

Wordsworth. 

My dear Cousin, — All my theories of perfect 
happiness are put to flight the moment I come in con- 
tact with those who could, if they chose, realize the 
airy visions which have appeared to me most delight- 
ful. You and I might fancy that scarcely a wish 
could remain ungratified in the mind of any High- 
land proprietor reigning over a wider domain than 
a German sovereign, and loved with an enthusiasm 
which fiction itself cannot exaggerate; yet go where 
you will in the North, our noble castles and roman- 
tic dweUings are used as mere shooting-boxes, re- 
maining silent, solitary, and deserted during the 
greater part of every successive year, while the few 
who remain stationary at home may still drink the 
Highland toast of old times, " Our native country, 
and may those who do not like it leave it." 



148 CLANS. 

In clays of yore, no Highland proprietor ven- 
tured long to remain an absentee, as his house was 
liable to be seized, and his whole domains were 
ravaged by the surrounding neighbourhood ; but 
one disadvantage of more settled times is, that the 
chiefs are now abdicated sovereigns, who prefer 
living in distant countiies, unknown and uncared 
for, with scarcely a thought of the hundreds among 
whom their presence would spread joy and pros- 
perity, or one sentiment of lingering interest in the 
clansmen and tenantry, who scarcely know them by 
sight, and yet cherish a hereditary attachment to the 
family, which their fathers would have lived and 
died to serve. A young Highland chieftain is gen- 
erally educated now at Eton or Westminster, fin- 
ished at Oxford, hurried roimd the tour of Europe, 
and then precipitated into an expensive regiment, 
or into a seat in Parliament, with no opportunity to 
reflect on his own peculiar station, responsibilities, 
and duties, except, perhaps, in respect to the preser- 
vation of grouse, and the encouragement of red 
deer. Great fashionable notoriety is attached in 
London life at present to the external paraphernalia 
of a Highland chief! The kilt, the tartan, and the 
bagpipe, have a sort of mountebank eclat in modern 
times, along with the peculiar names, now mere 
nicknames, which once distinguished the brave, hardy, 
and beloved proprietors of a Highland territory. 



CLANS. 149 

The shadow of their former greatness remains, but 
the reahty has departed; for we all know what 
clansmen and chieftains once were, and will never 
be again, since the time when fortmies, that should 
have been the source of splendour and usefulness at 
home, are squandered in an unsuccessful struggle 
for pre-eminence in London, while those who fancy 
they have gained it, are not much nearer the truth 
than Don Quixote, when he sat with bandaged eyes 
on a w^ooden horse, and imagined himself soaring 
through the air. 

The Highland tenantry, like those of Ireland, 
are suffering beneath the iron rule of absentees, 
who employ what the Scotch so appropriately call 
" grieves," Anglice bailiffs, to be the resident man- 
agers, and who look upon an estate as a mere 
machine for making money, while thousands of our 
countrymen are hurrying to Australia or Canada, un- 
willingly obliged to say, like the emigrant's melan- 
choly song, " We return, we return, we retm'n no 
more." It must be deep and hopeless misery, in- 
deed, that can make a Highlander willing to leave 
his little croft and cottage, even to reach a country 
where he is told that fhe pigs are fed upon peaches. 
He is still apt to think " the smoke of his own chim- 
ney brighter than the fire of a stranger's;" and 
never shall I forget the visit we once had of an 
aged man from Sutherland, who walked five hun- 
dred miles on his toilsome way to London, where 



150 CLANS. 

he meant to beg for permission to die on his native 
heath. The roof had been torn from the house 
where he dwelt, his garden had been laid waste, and 
his neighbours dispersed, but he asked only the 
boon of lingering out his remaining years at home. 
An old woman was heard lately in consultation with 
her son, who was about to embark for Australia, 
and who loudly grumbled at the dire necessity of 
going to a country where he heard there was no- 
thing to trade with but Kangaroos. " Well," re- 
plied his mother, in a consolatory tone, " is not a 
Kangaroo's money as good as any body else's !" In 
former times, the Highland clansmen have been 
known to maintain their chief at their own expense, 
and to raise a regiment among themselves, that he 
might obtain military rank; but should times of 
danger and rebellion ever again arise, the descend- 
ants of those powerful proprietors who, in former 
times, led thousands of followers to the field, may 
now plant their banner on the Highland hills, and 
find only battalions of sheep, where troops of men 
wovild formerly have gathered around their stan- 
dard. One old boatman, residing on a great estate 
recently sold to pay for the frippery of a London 
career, spoke to me of his absent chief with a touch- 
ing mixture of grief and indignation, saying, " He 
has not left himself the value of my oar ! — not so 
much land as will be a grave to him !" 

One of the finest traits I know of Highland at- 



CLANS. 151 

tachment was shown to the Seaforth family, after 
the rebeUion, when their property in the south of 
Ross-shire became forfeited. The tenantry could 
not be induced, either by fear or persuasion, to pay 
their rent to government, but regularly collected the 
whole amoimt, and forwarded every fraction of it to 
their absent chief, then resident at Paris. I was 
anxious to ascertain, when Lord Seaforth's succes- 
sor retiirned in more prosperous circumstances, how 
he testified a due sense of this devoted allegiance 
on the part of his clansmen, and was informed, that 
he sold the estate immediately, in order to purchase 
property in the West Indies ! Could any number 
of rum-puncheons and sugar-hogsheads compensate 
for losing a tenantry so deeply attached ? You told 
me once of a lecturer, who professed " to teach sen- 
sibility on mathematical principles," and he is the 
only person likely, I think, to define such feelings. 

Highland lairds allege, that the estates of south- 
ern proprietors are so limited, they can " whistle to 
all their tenantry from the chimney-top." It is al- 
leged, that when Martin of Galway wishes to let 
any land, he takes his future tenant to the simimit 
of a high hill, and asks, " What will you give for 
all you see?" How few, indeed, have reason to 
exclaim in a tone of lamentation, as Lord Leicester 
is said to have done lately, " I am Giant of Giant 
Castle, and have eaten up all my neighbours." 



152 BENAVIE. 

Though many Scottish territories have recently been 
broken to shivers, and sold among men of yesterday, 
some yet remain unmutilated, the enormous bulk of 
which, compared to more southern properties, is like 
that of a whale among minnows. The Duke of 
Sutherland has 1780 square miles of land, nearly a 
whole county as large as Devonshire ; Lord Bread- 
albane's estate stretches seventy miles west from his 
own door; the highroad in Skye passes through 
eighty miles of Lord Macdonald's property ; the late 
Duke of Atholl raised a regiment of 3000 men 
among his tenantry ; and on Lord Seafield's land 
there are 60,000 inhabitants, chiefly Grants. We 
may all remember the day, about twelve years ago, 
when the clan Grant, hearing that the poll was go- 
ing against their chief in a contested election, as- 
sembled in thousands, and with their pipes playing, 
marched down to Inverness; on which occasion, 
Lord Seafield's sister. Lady Anne, one of the most 
popular personages in the north, had to assure the 
Highlanders she was satisfied v^dth the treatment 
her family were receiving, or they would instantly 
have proceeded to hostile measures. 

After leaving Benavie, in a gig drawn by the 
same horse forty miles that day, we proceeded 
through splendid scenery to Arisaig, admiring every 
variety of form that mountain or glen can exhibit. 
Hills of unspeakable height, trees in boundless pro- 



# 



BENAVIE. 153 

fusion, rivers, lakes, rocks, precipices, every thing, 
for miles and miles, that could be admired or en- 
joyed, except human habitations, which were very 
few, and very far indeed between. Political econ- 
omists talk of Britain being too much crowded, as 
if one-half the inhabitants should be drowned that 
the other half might live comfortably ; but in this 
part of the country there would be room enough yet 
for you and me. 

Those who prefer continental travelling, where 
the sympathies are scarcely ever called forth by a 
sight of rural habitations, might think this wilder- 
ness of natural beauty sufficiently interesting ; but 
scenery appears to me like a body w^ithout a spirit, 
unless there be added to all the decorations of nature 
some signs of human life. I used to be told, that 
no one could look steadily at a mountain for ten 
minutes without discovering some living creature 
upon it ; but here you might watch during a long 
summer's day, and see nothing more alive than the 
rocks. Travellers, in a precipitous country like 
this, should get their nerves newly strung for the 
occasion, as the road is really like a slack-rope slung 
between the mountains. In places where we should 
merely have been killed on the spot by an overturn, 
there were no parapets ; but where we must have 
been literally dashed to atoms, a low wall had been 
raised, merely sufficient to give the horse a hint that 
14 



/v 



154 GLENFINNAN. 

he was not expected to go over, though he dehghted 
to approach the very edge, as if enjoying the jest 
of terrifying me. This animal must certainly once 
have been a civil engineer, he detected so instantly 
the slightest ascent in the road, vi^hen no inducement 
could make him at all accelerate the lounging pace 
in which he felt entitled to indulge. At one place, 
in the dusk of the evening, we suddenly turned a 
sharp corner of the road, and came so startingly 
close to a blazing fire surrounded by gypsies, that 
our quadruped shyed, and instantly backed to the 
very edge of a precipice. One step more and we 
were over, when a tall, fine-looking " Johnnie Faa" 
sprung forward, and seized the horse's bridle. Now 
for a robbery ! No ! but having led us safely past 
the danger, he vanished, without waiting to be either 
thanked or remunerated. 

Near the head of Glenfinnan lies a beautiful 
tract of country where I built my fifty-ninth cottage. 
The Trossachs are nothing to this ! Loch Shell 
hemmed in by a rugged range of rocky knolls, which 
are surmounted by peaked mountains and shaggy 
precipices. The hills were formerly clothed with 
forests, now thinned into beautiful clumps of hoary 
old fir trees, stretching their long bare arms in fan- 
tastic shapes and forms towards the road, and con- 
trasted with the pea-green foliage of the young 
birch wood. The whole scene is enclosed within a 



GLENFINNAN. 155 

stony range of barren mountains, looking as if their 
very bones had been picked, and conspicuous in the 
centre of this glen stands a monument raised to com- 
memorate the spot where Prince Charles first landed 
" to win the crown of his ancestors or perish," and 
to take possession of a country which must indeed 
have seemed well worth fi^htino; for. Here he 
gazed for the first time on its verdant fields, its lim- 
pid streams, its waving forests, and the bold heights 
of Ben Nevis rising four thousand feet above the 
spot where he stood, and here once more Charles 
Edward, as a conquered fugitive, looked for the last 
time upon his native country and hereditary king- 
dom, before he re-embarked to leave it for ever. 
They were bitter tears shed by the last of the Stuarts 
near this veiy spot, when, surrounded by more than 
a hundred Highland gentlemen whom his enterprise 
had ruined, he drew his sword with Princely dignity 
to begin an animating speech, but on turning to the 
brave men following him to banishment, he was 
struck to the heart with grief, suddenly sheathed it, 
and wept in silence. The monument is " neat and 
appropriate," but not very unlike a candlestick, sur- 
mounted by a diminutive statue of the Prince, who 
is supposed to be anxiously watching for the arrival 
of Locheil and his adherents. When the works of na- 
ture are on so gigantic a scale, any work of man must 
appear, as this does, like a contribution from a toy shop. 



156 ARISAIG. 

An inn is kept at Glenfinnan by the tallest man 
in the Highlands, who measures six feet seven, — or 
seven feet six, — and is large in proportion. Our 
host is said to be vain of his prodigious celebrity, 
and it is well for him if he can consider it an advan- 
tage, but your friend, who pitied a glow-worm for 
carrying a light because it was conspicuous, would 
not envy him. Some people ai'e vain of any pecu- 
liarity, and would like to be remarked for having 
two arms, or only one nose, if that were at all un- 
common, but the love of notoriety, without being 
very fastidious as to the cause, was never more curi- 
ously testified than by Voltaire, who envied a robber 
for being hanged, because it made him celebrated 
for a time. 

After wearying ourselves with admiring a med- 
ley of promontories, precipices, islands, mountains, 
forests, bays, and creeks, we arrived at Arisaig, 
which is so unusual a route anywhere, that the inn- 
keeper seemed in as much consternation at the arri- 
val of travellers, as if we had been comets, or had 
rode upon broomsticks. Till the landlady recovered 
her presence of mind, she ushered us into the kitchen, 
apologizing that her parlour and three best bed- 
rooms had been constantly occupied during the last 
twelve summers by a trio of gentlemen from Ox- 
ford, who come there to enjoy fishing and shooting 
during the whole season. I wish Messrs. Templar, 



* ARISAIG. 157 

Chaplin, and Thorpe, had each a Highland estate, 
since they seem so well disposed towards the coun- 
try ; but in the meantime it would have been conve- 
nient to enforce at Arisaig, the regulation made at 
the New^ Club, that no person can occupy his rooms 
above a fortnight, without making w^ay for a suc- 
cessor. 

Late in the evening, we were at length shown 
into a sitting-room, resembling an armory of guns, 
varied by fishing rods, and adorned with a greater 
variety of flies than Domitian ever killed. Here be- 
ing allowed by special license to partake of some 
refreshment, we " tea'd," though certainly the tea 
was not from Assam or from the Emperor of China's 
own tea-chest, but came, more probably, off the 
neighbouring hedges or hay -fields. 

Lord Cranstoun's beautifully situated cottage 
near this, might be mistaken for a villa from Chel- 
tenham, but shows no resemblance to a cottage, ex- 
cept in the name, being a solid substantial square 
mansion, situated in a perfect paradise for sportsmen, 
as the grounds are quite a zoological garden of 
birds, animals, and fish, w^ld, tame, and amphibious, 
every species of living creature in short, except man- 
kind ; but the solitude around this charming place is 
like that on Robinson Crusoe's island, before he came 
there himself. The motto of Lord Cranstoun's family 
is rather a selfish one, " Thou shalt want ere I want !" 
14* 



158 ARISAIG, 

A profound author makes the very original re- 
mark that, " every day must be followed by its 
night," and, having been asleep for some time, I 
shall now wish myself a good repose. You once 
d escribed a novel to me as " a book of sitting-up- 
all-night interest," which I hope this long letter may 
prove, when you honour it with a perusal, and pray 
write me a Rowland for an Oliver, as I rigidly ad- 
here, with my correspondents, to that sagacious old 
rule, " never give an apple, except to those who 
have an orchard." You have some good qualities, 
but frequent letter-writing is certainly not one of 
them, and, like Sheridan, who always contrived, 
when his creditors came for payment, to out-wit 
them and borrow^ more, you excel so much in apol- 
ogies, that after having intended your last " small 
note" to be protested, I now send you a laiger in- 
stalment than ever, though scarcely hoping to receive 
more than one per cent, in return. 

After all our difficulties and dangers, I may con- 
clude this epistle \vith saying, like Lord Grizzle in 
Tom Thumb, 

" Thus far our arms with victory are crown'd ; 
For though we have not fought, yet we have found 
No enemy to fight withal." 



SKYE. 



There is a pleasure in the pathless ■woods, 
There is a rapture in the lonely shore, 
There is society where none intrudes, 
By the deep sea, and music in its roar. 

Byron. 

Mv BEAR Cousin, — The Vicar of Wakefield gi-v'es 
great encoui'agement to hasty scribblers, by remark- 
ing, that " a book may be amusing with numerous 
errors, and dull \vithout a single absurdity ;" there- 
fore pray take this as you find it, and I hope you are 
not yet suifeited with beautiful scenery and miscel- 
laneous jottings. 

Having scarcely ever, during the last few weeks, 
escaped the sound of wheels, belonging either to a 
carriage, or a steam-boat, it was an agreeable vari- 
ety this morning when we entered the Excise boat, 
an elegant little sailing vessel, ready to assist us in 
crossing the fifteen miles between Arisaig and the 
Isle of Skye, which takes its name from a Danish 
word, signifying the Isle of Mist. 

During our voyage in this little fairy vessel, I 
could have pitied all the world but ourselves, we 
were so enchanted. It is curious that the utmost 
expression of enjoyment you can succeed in drawing 



160 SKYE. 

from a Scotch peasant is, " I canna complain !" 
Some people think it beneath their dignity to be en- 
tirely pleased under any circumstances ; but I coin- 
cide with the philosopher who remarked, that it was 
better to be boi-n with a disposition to look at the 
bright side of things, than to an estate of j£20,000 a 
year. Travellers carry their own pleasure, or ennui, 
like their baggage, along with them ; but yet the 
more nearly we approach the confines of perfect 
happiness, the more is our enjoyment mingled wath 
a feeling of awe, in reflecting that we are in a world 
where nothing can last ; and pleasure least of all. 

The difference between a steam-boat and a 
sailing-vessel seemed as great at first, as between a 
caterpillar and a butterfly, but my contempt foi" 
boilers and funnels did not last long, as we were 
very soon becalmed, when a few turns of the vulgar 
paddle would have been very acceptable. What a 
convenience the trade winds must be ! I thought of 
the dialogue between Macbeth's witches. "I'll 
give thee a wind !" " Thou art kind !" but it 
would not have suited me to continue the dialogue, 
" In a sieve I'll thither sail !" The two boatmen 
wielded their oars, and laboured so hard, under a 
burning sun during five hours, that I really felt 
grieved for them, and when the dark brown sail 
waved idly over our heads, I wished it were turned 
into a canopy of smoke, that we might have enjoyed 



ARMroALE CASTLE. 161 

all the stir and bustle of cutting through the water 
by steam. The useful is, in the long run, always 
preferable to the ornamental, and we had abundant 
time to arrive at this conclusion, while sitting on 
the water, making no perceptible progress, and wdth 
nothing to do but look at the rugged hills of Skye, 
which seemed never any nearer. 

Being obliged to make for the nearest point in 
order to arrive before midnight, we landed at Ard- 
voiser Bay, on a long range of high, sharp, slippery 
rocks, covered with w^et sea-w^eed, and betraying 
us every moment into a false step. Here our diffi- 
cult and dangerous progress became an apt emblem 
of prosperity, as the higher we rose, the less hope 
there was of escaping a fall. At one place, where 
I was tottering and sliding over a wilderness of sea- 
weed and rocks, all more slippery than ice, and 
thinking of Glengariy, a sure-footed Highlander, 
fracturing his skull in such a scene, I began to feel 
serious doubts whether my ow'n could be safely con- 
veyed to terra firraa, and felt perfectly certain, that 
the firet man who invented piers, did so after 
landing at Ardvoiser Bay, or some place very 
like it. 

Two thirds of Skye belonged to my grand- 
father and uncle in succession, who are now repre- 
sented by the present chieftain. Lord Macdonald, to 
whose beautifully situated castle w^e immediately 



162 ARMIDALE CASTLE. 

proceeded, though obhged on this occasion to bene- 
fit by the hospitaUty of an absent relative. Stran- 
gers, in former days, whom the family had never 
even seen, used to be entertained at Armidale castle 
by the factor, and often remained for several days ; 
but on entering the silent halls and uninhabited 
apartments, we felt, hke Hajii Baba, the want of a 
friend to say, " you are welcome." The feeling of 
solitude was singularly and painfully increased by 
seeing the almost living portraits of those who once 
would have given us so cordial a reception. All 
around appeared the relations with whom our ear- 
liest recollections of kindness were associated, — and 
yet we were alone ! I never knew the power of 
painting before ! We were at last in that house, 
where they had so often wished us to visit them, 
and of which they had spoken with so much delight ; 
but we had come after their voices are silent, and 
the place that once knew them shall know them no 
more. It was a solemn and mournful feeling, and 
when I looked for the first time on our forefathers, 
and thought on their more ancient progenitors, who 
were sovereign Princes of the Isles, entering into 
treaties with the monarchs of England, making war 
on the kings of Scotland, and intermarrying with 
their families, I could not but remember the pa- 
thetic language of Ossian, " Where are our fathers, 
O chiefs of the times of old? They are set Hke 



ARMroALE CASTLE. 163 

.stars that have shone, we only hear the sound of 
their praise. But they were renowned in their day,^ 
and the terror of other times. Thus do we pass in 
the day of our fall, like the last beams of the sun, 
when he hides his red head in the west." 

Here a gothic window of painted glass, exhibits 
a portrait in full Highland garb, representing the 
celebrated Somerled, first Lord of the Isles, a dis- 
tinguished warrior six hundred years ago, who mar- 
ried the daughter of a Norwegian king, and founded 
the family of Macdonald. It is related of him, that 
being once on a very small island, with only a hun- 
dred followers, he was besieged by the whole Nor- 
wegian fleet, and apprehensive that the enemy might 
overpower him, he adopted a singular stratagem to 
intimidate them from landing. The whole force 
under his command being clothed in goats' skins, 
lie ordered the Highlanders to march round the 
island with their colours flying, and their bagpipes 
playing. This attracted attention, and the moment 
his troops had passed out of sight, the men were 
desired to turn their coats inside out, and with this 
altered exterior, and a different gathering played on 
the bagpipes, they marched past the Norwegian 
fleet again. Having repeated a similar metamor- 
phosis several times, the invaders became intimi- 
dated at the number of regiments apparently mus- 
tering to oppose them, and set sail without beat of 



164 ARMffiALE CASTLE. 

drum. This is the only instance on record when a 
Lord of the Isles became a turn-coat. 

The portrait of chief general interest in Armi- 
dale Castle, is that of the celebrated Sir James Mac- 
donald, whose early death at the age of twenty-five, 
was universally lamented as an irreparable loss to 
literature and to society. Like the Admirable Crich- 
ton, he was prepared and trained to excel in the 
race which Providence ordained that he never should 
run, so that while all were ready to yield him the 
palm of triumphant success, he sunk into an un- 
timely grave. The extraordinary honom'S paid to 
his memory at Rome, notwithstanding his being a 
Protestant, exceeded what had ever been shown to 
any British subject since the death of Sir Philip 
Sidney ; and his epitaph, or rather panegyric, writ- 
ten by the famous Lord Littleton, is carved on mar- 
ble in the parish church at Armidale. There buried 
in the coffin beside himself lie all his waitings and 
papers ! Though admired and honoured by all oth- 
ers, he courted privacy himself, and drew a promise 
from Lady Margaret Macdonald, his mother, that 
not a page he had ever written should be preserved, 
to which she rigidly adhered, and thus the halo that 
shines around the memory of so distinguished a 
scholar is untarnished by the cupidity or injudicious- 
ness of survivors. 

In the present bookmaking age, no precaution 



ARMIDAI.E CASTI.E. 165 

on his own part could probably have shielded Sir 
James Macdonald from becoming the subject of a 
catch-penny volume, containing recollections of his 
lire-side conversations, varied by a transcript of all 
his boyish themes, and how-d'ye-do letters ; but a 
law should really be passed, making it felonious to 
attempt any man's life against his consent, and if 
he gives it, I would bring in a verdict oi felo de se. 
The race of self-interested speculators in biography 
had scarcely then appeared in the world, so that an 
eminent man might slip out of it without suffering 
from that " new terror of death," the assassination 
of fame which pursues a helpless mortal after he 
ought to be laid at rest in the grave. I remember 
being amused once at a jocular advertisement which 
appeared in the newspaper, announcing " the remi- 
niscences of a small puppy dog," that lived in a cage 
beside the lion at Exeter 'Change. He is supposed, 
like any other biographer of the present day, to bring 
the noble animal as much to his own level as possi- 
ble, and confidently announces his pretensions in 
these lines, — 



And few dogs have such opporliuiities liad, 
Oriitiowing how lions behave among friends, — 
How thai animal eals, how he moves, how he diinki;, 
Is all noted down by this Boswellso small, 
And 'tis plain, iVom each sentence, the puppy-dog ihinlis 
That the lion was no such great things aiter all. 
15 



166 ARMIDALE CASTLE. 

The best portrait of Sir James Macdonakl was 
painted at Rome, a very short time before his death. 
He is seated in an arm-chair, turning over the leaves 
of a book, and nothing can be more touchingly in- 
teresting than the thoughtful melancholy expression 
on his pallid countenance, while his high expanded 
forehead would have perfectly enraptured a phre- 
nologist. An earlier picture represents him in the 
Highland costume as a boy, carrying his gun, while 
his younger brother, who afterw^ards inherited the 
chieftainship, is playing at golf with the ball at his 
foot, an emblem perhaps of the good fortune which 
attended all his subsequent life. 

When a very ancient chief of the Grants w^as 
offered the Earldom of Seafield, he proudly declined 
it, saying, " Who would then be Laird of Grant?" 
and it has been thought that the chieftain of Mac- 
donakl, representing the ancient Lords of the Isles, 
need scarcely have accepted a coronet ; but when 
the title was given, peerages were peerages, not pro- 
duced in annual Whig crops, apparently at random, 
but reserved for men of fortune, family and distinc- 
tion. The chieftainship of a Clan, not being a 
chartered title, disputes have arisen during the pre- 
sent day respecting the pre-eminence in almost every 
Highland family, and none is more keenly contested 
than that of Macdonald. In various distinguished 
branches of the family, a mistaken belief arose, that 



ARMIDALE CASTLE. 167 

by proving themselves to represent Ranald Macdon- 
ald, and to have inherited his name as Ranaldson or 
Clanranald, they at once obtained the supremacy, 
whereas, the point to be demonstrated, is not " the 
true Ranaldson," but the true " Macdonald," a name 
by which the present chief is known throughout the 
Isles. 

The accurate and investigating Dr. Johnson, 
during his visit to Skye, made no mistake on this 
point ; but Sir Walter Scott, less historically correct, 
bestowed brevet rank on an " island Lord" who 
suited his poetical narrative, in consequence of 
which, the claimant to whom he gave a preference 
wrote immediately to the late Alexander Lord Mac- 
donald, urging him to acknowledge the justness of 
this miforeseen promotion. 

My uncle, more amused than irritated, returned 
the following answer, characteristic of his usucd 
urbanity and good humour. 

"Dear Sir, — Till you prove that you are my 
chieftain, I am yours, 

" Macdonald." 

When Sir Walter Scott spoke slightingly once 
of the " Slate family," as he named that of the 
chief, on account of his property being situated in 
the district of Sleat, a relation who was present 



168 ARMroALE CASTLE. 

remarked, " You will find, on inquiry, that in the 
house of Macdonald, the Slates were always upper- 
most," 

Alexander Lord Macdonald, for many years the 
liberal benefactor of Skye, is still remembered there 
with a warmth of gratitude, which neither time nor 
death have yet obliterated, and every eye brightened 
with pleasing recollection when we mentioned his 
name. He lived on terms of cordial intimacy with 
his clansmen and tenantry, whose interests it was his 
chief pleasure, during a long succession of years, to 
promote, while the greater proportion of his large 
income was expended on the improvement and 
decoration of his estate. An English visiter once 
asked him with surprise, how it happened that all 
his principal tenants came to dine at Armidale 
Castle w'henever they pleased, while in the South, 
farmers are welcomed only when they come to pay 
their rents, to which he replied, " Your English 
tenants are all boors, but mine are Highland gentle- 
men of family and education." 

Alexander Lord Macdonald lived to complete 
only one-third of the magnificent castle which he 
intended to raise here, on a plan by Gillespie, but 
even this comparatively moderate house forms a fine 
residence in the Gothic style. The situation is in- 
describably beautiful, almost overhanging an elbow 
of the Atlantic, and surrounded by a finely-wooded 



BROADFORD. 169 

});irk, with trees crowded to the shore, ahnost within 
water-mark, and the verdant forests, strangely con- 
trasted by a wall of barren mountains, ranged along 
the opposite coast, so bare and rugged, that you 
might suppose they had been blasted by lightning- 
Towards evening, the setting sun cast a ruddy glare 
over those gigantic hills of Moidart, which made 
them look like red porphyry, while the clouds seemed 
to be raining fire upon them. 

When the Duke of Orleans travelled through 
Scotland, he mentioned that no scenery on the Con- 
tinent, or elsewhere, had ever astonished him so 
much as the Coulin mountains of Skye, and I tied a 
knot on my memoiy at the moment to take the 
earliest opportunity of going there. That countiy 
was, however, a perfect cul de sac till lately, very 
difficult to get into, and still more difficult to escape 
from, but now, when steamboats have rendered every 
place almost equally accessible, you may see flocks 
and herds of visiters hurrying across from the main- 
land, and next morning we proceeded tow^ards the 
grand point of attraction, Loch Scavaig. Our drive 
across the counti-y towards Broadford, led through a 
country, in some places, so flat and barren, you 
might see a hare half a mile off, and the heavy wet 
clouds seemed entirely to have sponged the sun out 
of the skj^-. The view continued to be a spacious 
blank, till at last we came in sight of a fine Vesu- 
15* 



170 BROADFORD, 

vius-like mountain, on the summit of "which a Nor- 
wegian princess once desired to be buried, that her 
dirge might be sung by her native breezes. The 
idea sounds pretty and poetical, but there is not much 
more actual sense in it, than in the order given by 
an Austrian princess, that her body should not be 
buried in the family vault, as the last person interred 
there had died of the small-pox. 

The only visible occupants of the small inn at 
Broadford, where we stopped to dine, were a pretty 
little girl, about fourteen, who received our orders 
in the triple capacity of landlady, chambermaid, and 
cook, w^hile a boy still younger seemed to hold an 
equal plurality of offices. These young persons are 
the grandchildren of a ferryman, named M'Innes, to 
whom Prince Charles, in his utmost extremity, ap- 
plied for assistance after the battle of Culloden. The 
Prince's object was to escape from Skye, and the 
generous Highlander, knowing what a dangerous 
service it might be, and that a reward of =£30,000 
would be paid him for betraying the royal fugitive, 
nevertheless carried him safely over from Strathaird 
to Arisaig. In returning, this faithful adherent was 
seized by a king's ship, under command of Captain 
Ferguson, who guessed he had some knowledge of 
Prince Charles's concealment, and tried to extort a 
confession, finst by persuasion, and afterwards by in- 
flicting five hundred lashes, with cruel severity^ but 



STRATH. 171 

all in vain. The secret remained untold, and M'ln- 
nes received no other reward for his magnanimous 
conduct, than the inM'ard consciousness of integrity, 
while to his descendants he has bequeathed an hon- 
ourable poverty, and a name that ought not to be 
forgotten. 

After having paraded through Broadford, in- 
specting the village-pump and other public build- 
ings, we returned to dine on ham of every kind, 
and eggs of every date, but scarcely had we sat 
down, before the Rev. Mr. Mackinnon arrived, with 
so cordial an invitation to the house of his brother- 
in-law, Mr. Mackinnon of Corrichatican, that in half 
an hour I found myself transported into an elegant 
drawing-i'oom, under the same roof with the vener- 
able Mrs. Mackinnon, aged 95, who formerly enter- 
tained Dr. Johnson in Skye, enjoying a splendid sea 
view from the window, and welcomed by an agree- 
able circle of ready-made friends, who had not been 
conscious of our existence an hour before. There 
really seems to be a " Strangers' friend society" at 
every house on the island, and no one can feel him- 
self a stranger long. The inns having no horses or 
conveyance of any kind, travellers in Skye move 
about like the Ayrehire beggars, who are laid help- 
lessly down at a door, till, having been received and 
refreshed, they can be passed on to the nearest 
house beyond. After spending a day most agreea- 



172 STRATH. 

bly at Corry, we were conveyed to the manse at 
Strath, where the most unqualified and abundant at- 
tention is paid to that injunction of Scripture, " use 
hospitahty one towards another, without grudging." 
Mr. Mackinnon made his house, his time, and his 
servants, entirely our own, and we felt so much at 
home, during the two days of our stay, that I could 
not but think the visiters at the manse of Strath 
must sometimes be in danger of forgetting Solo- 
mon's admonition to guests, " remove thy foot from 
thy neighbour's house, lest he weary of thee, and 
curse thee." 

We went on Sunday to hear Mr. Mackinnon 
preach, first in Gaelic and then in English. The 
parish church being now in a ruinous, tumble-down 
state, both services were performed in the open air, 
which, on a fine summer day, has a truly delightful 
and apostolical appearance. We sat on a carpet of 
daisies, surrounded by mountains, and canopied by a 
gorgeous azure sky, reminding us of the power and 
presence of an Almighty Creator, more than any 
walls built by human skill, while the sacred music 
of the psalms was mingled with the notes of a 
blackbird, the humming of bees, the bleating of 
sheep, and the distant cry of the sea-gulls. All 
nature seemed united to " speak our Maker as we 
can." 

There we literally seemed to breathe liquid sun- 



STRATH. 173 

shine, but in cities, the want of ventilation at our 
churches and chapels is a serious grievance, and an 
eminent chemist, wishing lately to prove what a 
poisonous atmosphere is endured by crowded con- 
gregations at Edinburgh, carefully bottled off a spe- 
cimen of the air in various churches, after the audi- 
ence had dispersed. The result was, that a fly could 
scarcely survive upon the polluted air, which had 
been breathed successively by a dozen of persons 
at least, or, if the sermon had been long, by double 
the number. I often wish that air might become 
dyed of a different colour, after being used, that 
those who live in a perpetual terror of fresh air 
might see the poisonous atmosphere to which they 
condemn themselves, for all the tasteful ruralities of 
life are destroyed by those who dread the gentlest 
zephyrs, and some of our friends, even if they lived 
in a bottle, would wish to put the cork in. Mr. 
Irving used to say that he had " a satin and velvet 
congregation" at his chapel in London, but here we 
saw one entirely of tartan. The people were almost 
universally of the lower ranks, and so indigent, that 
the usual Scotch custom of making a collection 
during service, for the poor, was entirely omitted, as 
mcst of those present would have only been giving 
with one hand, to receive in another. Still I re- 
gretted the omission, even though our subscription 
had been like that in the famous anti-climax of 



174 STRATH. 

O'Connell's rent, " a penny from the poor man, a 
half-penny from the beggar man, and a farthing 
from the starving man." 

One of the most indigent old men in the con- 
gregation we observed indefatigably handing about 
his own " snuff mull" among his very poor looking 
neighbours, and I could not but admire the spirit of 
gentleman-like liberality with which he made every 
one welcome to share the greatest luxury he could 
offer. Two very aged women, to whom he was 
peculiarly attentive, reclined ahnost full-length on 
the turf beside him, and the thought forced itself 
upon me, how soon they must all be laid beneath 
it, — " Time had shaken them by the hand, and 
death could not be far behind." When looking at 
this " old kirk-yard," which seemed like " a valley 
of dry bones," the fresh green grass waving in the 
breeze over the ancient graves of many a departed 
generation, it was impressive to reflect how thin a 
barrier divided us all, — that the sun above our heads 
was only lighting us to the tomb, — that every hour 
which strikes, and every pulse which beats, is the 
knell of departing time, — that many a Sabbath is 
already registered in the eternal record on our ac- 
count, — and that soon, veiy soon, the sum of all our 
Sabbaths shall be made up. 

No choice is allowed us when or where we shall 
go through the solemn mystery of death ; but how 



STRATH. 175 

to meet its sacred terrors is the one only point of 
importance, and that is placed in our own hands, 
whether we shall rush unprepared and unwilling 
into the presence of an offended Judge, or pass, with 
holy hope and peaceful resignation, into the man- 
sions of a forgiving and beneficent Father. 

There would be no unhappiness in this world if 
we could conform our wnlls entirely to the will of 
God, but such a feeling, in its utmost perfection, 
can never be attained while the soul continues im- 
prisoned in a mortal body ; yet men are happy in 
exact proportion as they advance in such an implicit 
submission to the Almighty ; and it is the greatest 
triumph of faith over nature, when we can see hope 
even illuminate the grave, and calmly acquiesce in 
the solemn decree, that the tomb shall speedily 
close between us, and all we have ever yet seen or 
known, confidently believing that an admission has 
been obtained for us, undeserving as we are, into a 
])righter and better world, " a new heaven and a 
new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness." 

There was a strange mixture of belief and infi- 
delity in the last words of Thistlewood the murderer, 
before he was laimched into eternity, " I shall soon 
know the great secret !'* The Highlandei's talk of 
death with as much fearlessness as if it were the 
escape of a bird from its cage, or like cutting the 
cables that confine a balloon to the earth ; and they 



176 STRATH. 

have a curious custom of sending messages to the 
dead by their dying friends,— for in no country are 
the deceased so entirely spoken of, and thought of, 
as being " not lost, but gone before," — as yet living, 
though absent ; and I have always believed that 
the unseen w-orld is not so far distant as many sup- 
pose, for here already we are invisibly surrounded 
by " ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for 
them w^ho shall be heirs of salvation." Some Chris- 
tians accustom themselves to think too vaguely and 
indefinitely of Heaven, as a place of disembodied 
spirits, where they shall flit about like wreaths of 
mist upon the mountain tops ; and such mistaken 
views engender a degree of careless indifference, 
w'hich could not continue if we realized the blessed 
consciousness, that our bodies shall rise at the resur- 
rection, — that we shall be re-united to the Chris- 
tian companions of our earthly existence, — that we 
.shall enjoy communion with the saints and martyrs 
whose memory we have been accustomed to rever- 
ence, — and, above all, that our glorified Redeemer 
himself shall welcome us to those mansions of eter- 
nal joy, which he died that we might enter. 

Thus all our prospects briglit'ning to the last, 
Our Heav'ii commences ere the world be past. 



LOCH SCAVAIG. 



While nature seems to sit alone, 
Majestic on a craggy throne. 

Confusion now hath made his masterpiece. 

Macbeth. 

My dear Cousin, — We used, long ago, to pity 
the Romans for being obliged to write upon wax, 
but that could scarcely seem a more uncomfortable 
task than to write legibly upon this glazed slippery 
paper now in fashion, where the words must be 
traced often three times over, and after all are not 
very readable. Nothing appears less understood in 
the world, than that the chief object of writing is to 
be read, or so many people would not adopt beau- 
tiful but illegible hands ; and as for Members of 
Parliament, during their days of greatness, when 
franks were still in being, it seemed their favourite 
achievement to adopt a signature which no one 
could decipher. A friend of ours once showed me 
her collection of illegible franks, and I would as 
soon have attempted to make out a Herculaneum 
manuscript. Much mischief has been done in the 
world by its becoming so universally acknowledged 
an axiom, that " all clever people write bad hands," 
consequently it is assumed, that all who write bad 
16 



178 SCAVAIG AND CORUISK. 

hands are clever; and those who show no other 
symptoms of being so, can, at all events, use point- 
less pens and glazed paper, like those with which I 
am about to teaze and puzzle you. 

We now proposed to navigate our course towards 
the celebrated bay called Loch Scavaig, and to pre- 
pare for admiring that far-famed ne plus ultra of 
Highland fresh-water lakes, " Loch Coruisk," which 
seemed so difficult of access, that I almost despaired 
of ever delighting my eyes with the view of its dark 
waters and rugged boundaries. Wherever we 
stayed in Skye, it always turned out to be " twenty 
miles distant," and the only mode of access, by sea 
in an open boat. For one tolerable day now, I 
would have exchanged a week of the very worst 
weather at any other time ; and fortunately on 
Monday the sun treated us to so splendid a blaze of 
light and heat, as could scarcely have been outdone 
in Italy or the tropics. 

By a consultation of watches, it was nine o'clock 
when our boat started on its rowing match of 
twenty miles distance and back again. We had 
four oars, and the boatmen pulled so well, that we 
accomplished it, including stoppages, in exactly 
twelve hours. We had what sailors call " a lady's 
breeze," which never seemed to know its own 
mind ; and as the French have a proverb, that " the 
wind in a man's face makes him wise," we must 



SCAVAIG AND CORUISK. 179 

have become perfect philosophers on this occasion, 
seeing at every turn we expected to put up a sail ; 
but no ! it actually veered round five times during 
the day, becoming always more adverse. The 
weather-cocks had a sad life of it ! I have long 
observed an interesting and remarkable fact as to 
tides, that, steer in what direction we may, they are 
always against us ; and both in going and return- 
ing, our bark had to stem its utmost force. We 
had, however, a deliciously hot day, clear, and 
perfectly bright, except at the horizon, where a 
curious ribbon of mist ran the whole way along 
between the ocean and sky. 

When the Doge of Venice next marries the sea, 
he should come to Skye, where his bride may be 
seen in her utmost possible beauty, with " weeds 
that sparkle, and with waves that blaze." On 
approaching the shore, we saw into the clear crystal 
depths so distinctly, that you might have read a 
newspaper lying underneath. Here the medusas 
had a beautiful appearance, as a continual succes- 
sion of them floated upwards in the water, painted 
in so great a variety of brilliant colours, that they 
looked like China plates, while some were so 
transparent, they might have been mistaken for 
glass tumblers. A perfect garden of sea-weed and 
shells, exhibiting the most vivid colours, and divided 
by patches of glittering sand, looked so beautiful 



180 SCAVAIG AND CORUISK. 

and inviting, that I wished myself endowed with 
the lungs of a fish, to have dived down, and walked 
about in those cool retreats, where the mermaid's 
song might have been most appropriately sung, — 

My gay bower is biggit o' the gude ships' keels, 
And the banes o' the drown'd at sea ; 

The fish are the deer that fill my parks, 
And the water waste my dowrie. 

And my bower is slated wi' the big blue waves, 

And pav'd wi' the yellow sand, 
And in my chambers grow bonnie white flowers. 

That never grew on land. 

I observed an otter busily fishing for his liveli- 
hood among the rocks, and hope he enjoyed better 
sport than we did, as the whole party carried lines 
during twelve hours, without any better success than 
two nibbles and a bite. After hooking one very 
fine lythe, which rose to the surface, he escaped, 
probably laughing in his sleeve at om* want of 
skill. Here I was shown a place where the late 
proprietor of Strathaird, who thought no more of 
ordering a new house, than w^e do of building a new 
bonnet, actually had three successive mansions for 
himself and family, before he felt satisfied with the 
situation. Number one was too near the shore, as 
he said it was impossible to breathe there, so he 
razed it to the foundation. Number two had been 
elevated rather high up the bank, so it was forsa- 



Strathaird's cave. 181 

ken ; but at last number three hit the happy me- 
dium, and he condescended to live and die there. 
Another somewhat expensive eccentricity of the old 
gentleman's was, that having once ordered a supply 
of glass and crockery from Liverpool, which was so 
ill packed, it became broken, he always afterwards 
made his guests and his family drink their tea, wine, 
or beer in silver cups, not by any means an agreea- 
ble substitute for China. 

Strathaird's cave, which drew tears of rapturous 
admiration from the late Lord Kinneder, is one of 
the seven wonders of Skye, being exeedingly exten- 
sive, and lined with beautiful spar, so perfectly white 
and crystallized, that I have seen morsels broken off, 
with which an absent man would have sugared his 
tea. The entrance is veiy imposing, as if a hill had 
been torn asunder to form it. Both sides are flank- 
ed by prodigious masses of rock and spar, covered 
with dark draperies of sea-weed, which had the ef- 
fect, at some distance, of large shaggy animals hang- 
ing over the roof. An inner cave is still finer, but 
so difficult of access, that I wished it had been im- 
possible. A steep, slippery inclined plane of glassy 
wet spar, looking like sheets of ice, thirty feet high, 
must be first surmounted, while one sailor, \vith a 
lighted torch, leads the way, and another follows 
behind, to catch those who fall. Shakspeare re- 
marks, that " many would be cowards if they dare," 
16* 



182 Strathaird's cave. 

but I always dare. On this occasion, we should 
certainly have fractured two or three limbs at least ; 
and not having a skilful surgeon with us, I made a 
pretext, that great damage having recently been done 
to the cave by tourists, who broke fragments of the 
stalactite off, to take away for specimens, it would 
be painful to witness the cruel devastation. A very 
curious monk's head, with a long beard, most accu- 
rately sculptured by nature, once decorated this cave, 
but the beard has gradually been broken off and 
pilfered. Some travellers would steal the nose from 
the Venus de Medici if they could ! Most of those 
weighty samples of the cave are, after all, hurried 
into a watery grave before reaching the shore, and 
the perpetrators of these disgraceful mutilations 
should be intimidated by the apparition which still 
remains in this cave, a gigantic white statue of spar, 
standing on a pavement like onyx stones, commonly 
pointed out as the geni of the place. The proprie- 
tor being naturally anxious to impede future devas- 
tations, a hideously ugly wooden paling has been 
raised across the mouth of this remarkable cave, 
backed by a substantial modern gate, and clumsy 
padlock. I almost fainted at the sight of it ! This 
disenchants the whole scene, and puts nature out of 
countenance, but if visiters will act like mischievous 
schoolboys, they deserve to be no better treated. 
Along many miles of this coast we were enter- 



PRINCE Charles's cave. 183 

tained by seeing a continual succession of caves, 
such as men perhaps once inhabited previous to the 
more comfortable invention of houses. They ap- 
peared in most fanciful and picturesque architecture, 
some forming Gothic arches, and others resembling 
ruined castles, the v^alls varied by brilliant tints of 
yellow, green, or white, with irregular windows, 
buttresses, towers, and gate-posts, while many 
seemed so like the dens of wild beasts, that if a 
bear had emerged from their dark and solitary re- 
cesses, it would have appeared quite natural. The 
ragged outlines of these rocks frequently form curi- 
ous resemblances to faces, profiles, ships, and other 
imaginaiy phantoms, which we amused ourselves by 
tracing, and one gigantic negro's head, visible for 
several miles, was so completely obvious to every 
eye, that I wonder the slave ships never captured it. 

The life of Charles Edward might furnish mate- 
rials for half a dozen romances, and we now ap- 
proached the dismal cave, where, after all was lost 
but honour, he passed several dreary nights in soli- 
tary concealment. Our four Highland boatmen 
silently took off their blue bonnets, placed them on 
the seat, and continued respectfully uncovered till 
we had passed it, and I heard the tune of " Charlie 
is my Darling," sung in a tone so subdued, that Ar- 
gyll himself could scarcely have been offended. 

Prince Charles, amongst his other accomplish- 



184 PRINCE Charles's cave. 

ments, must have been an excellent climber, as I 
mshecl extremely to enter the obscure Palace of 
Royalty, but the only access is over a rude cause- 
way of slippery stones and sea-weed, ascending 
more than twenty feet. All things desirable in this 
life are difficult of attainment, and with a world of 
enthusiasm on the subject, I remained ingloriously 
seated in the boat, while a gentleman who acted as 
our cicerone, obligingly leaped on shore, took the 
rocks in gallant style, and gathered a perfect bou- 
quet of flowers fiom the Prince's den, consisting 
of sea-pinks, rock-roses, wild geraniums, and prim- 
roses. He said the marks might still be traced of 
a fire having burned near the mouth of this caA'^e, 
but the entrance is so blockaded by stones and 
grass, that it is scarcely visible, therefore I did not 
wonder the English troops were unsuccessful in 
their game at hide and seek with the royal fugitive, 
along so wild and broken a coast. At length he 
made himself known to the laird of Mackinnon, 
who faithfully answered this appeal to his hospi- 
tality, by conveying his unexpected guest to safer 
quarters. On being afterwards accused of thus fa- 
vouring the prince, and tried for his life in London, 
he obtained a pardon, and was about to leave the 
court of justice, when the judge called him back, 
saying, " Tell me, if Prince Charles were again in 
your power, what you would do ?" The stout old 



PRINCE Charles's cave. 185 

Highlander replied, with very marked emphasis, " I 
would do to the prince as you have this day done 
to me, — I would send him back to his own coun- 
try!" The old Jacobite song expresses no more 
than was felt by many a brave Highlander in these 
days,— 

" If 1 had twenty thousand lives, 
I'd die as aft for Charlie." 

During oui* progress, we were shown the posi- 
tion of another remarkable cave, in the island of 
Eigg, where two hundred Macdonalds, having 
taken refuge from a superior number of Macleods, 
were traced to their place of concealment, when 
the enemy's boats were about to go away, in con- 
sequence of a scout having left the mark of his foot- 
steps on the snow. A fire was immediately lighted, 
which filled up the mouth of the cave, and the 
wretched fugitives were literally smoked to death. 
In most Highland traditions, not excepting Glencoe, 
the Macdonalds were an exceedingly ill-used clan. 
One of the refugees, being connected by marriage 
with the Macleods, was offered permission to crawl 
out on his hands and knees, and to bring out four 
others along with him in safety, but having selected 
a friend whom they would not spare, he preferred 
death with his favourite clansman, to life without 
him. The bones of these ill-fated Macdonalds, all 



186 SCAVA.IG AND CORUISK. 

whitened by time, are still to he seen lying near the 
entrance, where they had crowded for air, and the 
straw is yet visible on which their beds had been 
made. 

The island of Eigg exhibits the most whimsical 
freak of nature I ever saw, being on the southern 
side perfectly flat, except where one prodigious 
rock, called the Scuir of Eigg, rises twelve hundred 
feet perpendicularly out of the sea. It stands up 
very much as the egg of Columbus did, when he 
balanced it on the small end ; and we may say like 
the Highlander, when asked what he thought of a 
fine lunar rainbow, " It's neat ! — very neat, as all 
the works of nature is !" 

Now for Loch Scavaig ! — or Loch Savage, as it 
might more appropriately be named. What a 
scene ! It is actually a burlesque on Glencoe ! The 
besetting sin of travellers is said to be exaggera- 
tion, so I must avoid it ; but never — no, never did 
I see anything to compare with this ! You would 
say, "It is horribly beautiful !" The Spanish pro- 
verb observes, that " He who has not seen Seville 
has seen nothing 3" and I would transfer the re- 
mark to Loch Scavaig. We were told that Thomson 
the artist threw away his pencil and brushes in de- 
spair, when he first beheld it ; and there goes my 
pen ! 

Miss Fanny Kemble concludes her journal in an 



SCAVAIG AND CORUISK. 187 

attitude of speechless astonishment at Niagara. 
Shall I do the same here ? No ! out of mere com- 
passion to your curiosity, I mean to try whether 
there be language sombre, dark, and wild enough to 
paint a scene as dismal as death itself. If ever a 
tree grew here, it must have been the upas tree; 
and Bunyan probably had this very scene in his eye, 
when he described the Giant Despair's residence. 
After landing in the bay of Scavaig, we crossed 
about four hundred yards of rock, overgrown 
wdth wild myrtle and heather, when we reached 
the dark, deep, fresh-water lake of Coruisk, 
imprisoned within a circle of gigantic barren 
mountains, looking like ragged purple clouds, 
the summit of which seemed nearer the sky than 
the earth. The least of these hills might be 
cousin-german to Mount Blanc, only we missed 
the livery of perpetual snow on their splintered 
summits. Here, for the first time, I saw midday and 
midnight at once ! a brilliant blazing sun boiling 
the water, and scorching the rocks on one side, 
while at an opposite end, the lake seemed turned to 
ink, and the hills looked as if a deluge of pitch and 
tar blackened their precipitous sides. This place 
seems like the worn-out remains of some old world, 
torn, shattered, and thrown aside in rugged heaps, 
as being useless rubbish, never again meant for 
mortal use. You would wonder how the clouds 



188 SCAVAIG AND CORUISK. 

contrive to get over the tall, steep pinnacles, appa- 
rently piercing the sky in all directions ; and some 
of those mighty steeples, one of which, three thou- 
sand feet high, is named " the black peak," can 
never have been trod by a human footstep. 

While we stood, an eagle flitted silently about, 
from rock to rock, like a great frigate sailing through 
the air ; wild goats were visible straying over their 
native fastnesses ; red deer harbour in herds along 
the valley ; and troops of sea-gulls fluttered upon a 
little fairy islet visible above the surface of the lake. 
No sign of human life or human habitation was 
there. Let me entreat that another year shall not 
elapse before your footsteps follow ours, and I am 
sure you will approve of my recommendation if you 
follow it ; but, as Home Tooke says, " there are 
two sorts of fools about advice, those who give it, 
and those who will not take it." 

It seemed presumptuous to disturb the gloomy 
perpetual silence which reigns around Coruisk, but 
when we awakened the echoes, you would have 
thought a whole army had started into life, and 
were shouting in chorus, till the sound died off, ap- 
parently some miles distant. One of the sharpest 
peaks, commonly called " the shouting mountain," 
most amply merited the name this day, for we made 
it speak in very audible accents, and when a steam- 
boat comes here, the captain causes a bugle to be 



SCAVAIG AND COKUISK. 189 

sounded, which must have an effect like enchant- 
ment. We tried a laughing chorus in the style of 
Der Freischutz, which went off with great eclat, 
and a thunder-storm would appear to tremendous 
advantage among those hills and rocks. 

Full of awe and astonishment at beholding such 
an uproar of nature, such a scene of blank desola- 
tion, we sat down to recover the shock, and also to 
partake of some excellent sandwiches and sherry. 
The debris of several former pic-nics was strewed 
around, in the form of well-picked bones and broken 
glasses ; but one gentleman told me, that not long 
since he found a full bottle of porter, corked and 
ready for use, — a most substantial present from the 
fairies, who frequent these glens. 

You might imagine that no person's spirits could 
stand a residence here of above an hour, and that a 
week would be quite out of the question ; but on a 
neighbouring bay, dismally wild and sombre, stands 
a little gay slated mansion, wdth quite an air of 
modern fashion, belonging to a Lieutenant M'Mil- 
lan. He has pitched his tent in one of the last 
retreats on the surface of the earth where I should 
have expected to discover a member of the Junior 
United Service Club, but he may say, perhaps, 
like the Irishman in London, " Je in'ennnis tres bien 
id .'" Lieutenant M'Millan is probably as far aloof 
from neighbours as the gentleman you told me of in 
17 



190 sia-E. 

Australia, who accidentally snuffed out his candle 
one evening, and had to ride three miles to get it 
lighted 5 and as ill off for news as the clergyman at 
St. Kilda, who continued praying for King William 
more than a year after His Majesty's decease, till 
accidentally informed that Queen Victoria had been 
crow^ned some months before. 

An English traveller, several years ago, visited 
the island of Muck, where, finding a clergyman of 
talents and education, he commiserated his solitary 
state so much, that ever since he has persevered in 
sending him constantly a London daily newspaper. 
He should send it alternate days to Lieutenant 
M'Millan ! That gentleman very nearly fell a sa- 
crifice lately to his taste for mountain scenery. 
When showing the place to a guest, perhaps his 
only visiter that season, a crash was heard overhead, 
and a solid square fragment of rock, a hundred tons 
in weight at least, started downwards. The two 
gentlemen had scarcely time to give themselves over 
for lost, as it rolled directly towards them, when, 
after bounding from one projection to another, it 
suddenly shivered into pieces, which w^ere show^ered 
clear over their heads. This predicament reminded 
me of the Irishman describing similar scenery, when 
he ended by saying, " here the delighted spectator 
every instant expects the rocks to fall on his head 
and crush him to death." 



SKYE. 



191 



Some weather-stained precipices along the shore 
are covered with a hchen resembling rusty iron. 
Many of the stones are also black, but encrusted 
over with patches of white coral ; and it is curious, 
when touching those under the sun's rays, that a 
sensible difference of heat may be observed, the 
darker half being many degrees hotter. 

On the simimit of a sharp-pointed hill, where 
you could scarcely imagine room for one person to 
stand, the estates of three proprietors divide, and the 
chieftains of Macdonald, Mackinnon, and Macleod, 
might all shake hands on that elevated peak, each 
standing on his own property. Much bloodshed 
might have been saved long ago, if the limits of 
property had been as clearly defined and acknow- 
ledged. The traditionary recollection of boundaries 
is yet preserved in many parts of the Western 
Highlands, by observing the old custom of " whip- 
ping the marches." Each parish schoolmaster was 
bound, in former times, to take his pupils in proces- 
sion once a-year round the most remarkable land- 
marks between the neighbouring estates, and there 
ever)' boy received so severe a flogging, that he 
never afterwards forgot it. We read, in the life of 
Benvenuto Cellini, that his father, on a somewhat 
similar plan, once showed him, when he was a child, 
a salamander in the fire, and instantly gave him a 
violent box on the ear, saying, that blow would fix 
^t in his memory for ever. 



192 SKYE. 

This was a day indeed ! — we did not return to 
the manse of Strath till nine o'clock at night, hav- 
ing kept Mr. Mackinnon waiting dinner four hours, 
a trespass on his hospitality so beyond the reach of 
apology, that I did not attempt one. Sitting down 
to dinner in the Highlands at ten o'clock, is a great 
progress of civilization, and we do flatter ourselves 
that no London exclusives can possibly hope to out- 
do us, in putting their friends to inconvenience by 
waiting. As an old lady said once, with a sigh of 
resignation, when her family insisted on dining late, 
" It is, at any rate, a very cheap piece of elegance !" 

A Greenock clergyman, who preached a short 
time since in this neighbourhood, unintentionally 
gave great offence by praying for " Skye, and other 
barbarous islands ;" but, for my own part, when- 
ever I think of cordiality or kindness, my thoughts 
will turn, though not " untravelled," to this very 
singular looking country, where a statute of Hospi- 
tality should be placed on the shore, holding out 
her hand to w^elcome strangers as they arrive. Here 
we seemed to have suddenly become the near rela- 
tives and intimate friends of every individual we saw, 
while I began almost to fancy we must have 
recently succeeded to the whole island, and were 
come to take possession. 

Nothing can be more depressing than to witness 
the ruinous effects produced in Skye by the disuse of 
kelp. Every change in our manufactures throws 



SKYE. 193 

some people of course out of employment, and here, 
thousands who could once earn a competence, are now 
deprived of their only resource, while many whom 
we saw, having already exhausted all their provi- 
sions, were wandering along the shore, picking up 
shell-fish as their sole means of existence. To the 
no small credit of those poor destitute people, not a 
sheep is ever stolen, nor an article of any kind miss- 
ing, though two families, who were starving of cold 
and hunger, next door to each other, were reduced 
to live in one apartment, and to use the furniture of 
the rest for fuel. 

Troops of men were flocking along the highway 
with a bag of meal, hterally a single "feed of 
oats," slung over their shoulders, going to " the 
Continent," as they call Scotland, in search of 
work. Not one of these wanderers begged, and 
we were told, that the first account which generally 
reaches home of their ha\ing got employment, is 
transmitted in company with a boll of meal, for the 
use of friends and parents left behind. One might 
have feared, that every warm and generous feeling 
of the heart would be chilled and frozen into sel- 
fishness by the intense suffering we witnessed, but 
it is far otherwise, and the magnanimous self-denial 
of Highlanders for the sake of their relations, is a 
beautiful trait of national character. When my 
late father, in 1794, raised and commanded a regi- 
17* 



194 SKYE. 

ment of 600 Caithness Highlanders to assist in pro- 
tecting the country from threatened invasion, he 
discovered that the recruits were intent on saving" 
money for their famihes, to so romantic an excess, 
that many did not eat provisions enough to keep 
them in health, therefore he ordered the officers to 
superintend their men during dinner, to ascertain 
that the rations were actually consumed. None of 
these soldiers would suffer from a complaint which 
attacked an old bon vivant lately, who sent for his 
physician to say that he was troubled with " an un- 
pleasant sensation of emptiness before dinner, and a 
most intolerable fulness after eating!" 

Some of the poor in Skye have scarcely a no- 
tion of any food but oatmeal, and when a gentle- 
man asked a boy one day if he did not tire of 
porridge, the youth looked up quite aghast with 
astonishment, saying, " Would ye hae me no' like 
ray meat !" English travellers have a strange idea 
of our Caledonian dishes, most of which are bor- 
rowed from the French; but I was amused lately at 
one of our southern friends, who thought the only 
dressing we gave a sheep's head was to singe the 
hair off; but after tasting the broth which it made, 
he declared his intention ever afterwards to throw 
some burned wool into the soup, to give it that pe- 
culiar zest which he greatly admired. It used to be 
alleged of a certain English Baronet, that he saved 



SKYE. 195 

the expense of ha^'ing his hair cut, by singing it 
off! Where he was visiting once, the whole family 
became alarmed during the night by so powerful a 
smell of fire, that the servants hurried all over the 
house in search of the cause, till having traced it 
to his; room, they burst in and found him, with a 
candle in his hand, only half through the operation, 
lighting and extinguishing his hair in rapid suc- 
cession. 

The immense quantity of waste land we saw in 
Skye, and the number of unemployed destitute peo- 
ple, made me -vsish that the two could be made to 
benefit each other, the sons of the soil being hired 
to cultivate it, and gaining a livelihood for doino- so. 
The miserable pittance they exist on now, cannot 
in many instances be called a livelihood at all, and 
they are allowed no more oppoiixmity to improve it, 
than the two money -making boys had in jail, who 
lately made three shillings a-day by selling their old 
clothes to each other. We were delighted to hear 
that the very ob-vious plan of improving the unen- 
closed commons, is about to be tried on a great 
scale by Colonel Gordon of Cluny, who lately pur- 
chased a large estate on " the Long Island," which 
is chiefly distinguished for being the ugliest place in 
Scotland. The new proprietor has already imported 
a ship-load of ploughs, harrows, axes, and spades, 
and we wished every success to his experiment of 



196 SKYE. 

transforming barren heaths into fertile fields, and 
poor'unemployed desponding idlers, into active, happy 
and industrious tenantry. Speed the plough ! It will 
turn out true in this neighbourhood, more probably 
than anywhere else, that " he who makes two grains 
of corn grow, where only one grew before, is a ben- 
efactor to his species." 

The Skye cottages cannot be said to enliven and 
embellish the scenery, as they are the most mournful 
looking dwellings I ever beheld, built entirely, roof 
and walls, of green turf, more like the grassy mound 
of an ancient grave, than a place where the business 
and pleasures of life are to be carried on. " The 
day seem'd like the night, asleep," yet so little does 
happiness really depend on external circumstances, 
that, surrounded as they are by desolation, the peo- 
ple do occasionally contrive to enjoy something like 
cheerfulness, and at one place I saw three old wo- 
men, who seemed to have lighted their " council 
fire," in a field near the road, looking the very pic- 
tures of a snug gossip, and as contented with their 
tea-kettle over a bonfire of sticks, as if it had been 
a silver urn, with a lamp underneath. 

In every family here there are sons, brothers, or 
cousins, hurrying to Australia in search of the golden 
fleece. That country is the great lumber-room now 
for stowing away supernumerary people, and I was 
much interested, before we left the manse of Strath, 



SKYE. 197 

to be present at the marriage of a young couple 
who intended making a wedding jaunt to the anti- 
podes. Mr. Mackinnon, with his usual kindness, 
invited the w'hole friends and attendants into a par- 
lour, where, for the first time, I heard the ceremony 
in Gaelic. It must have been, to judge from the 
agitation of all present, deeply impressive; and in 
less than ten minutes, the pretty interesting bride 
was metamorphosed from a Highland housemaid 
into an Australian shepherdess. Her friends were 
all dressed in the tartans of their various clans, look- 
ing most respectable, and evidently much awed by 
the compliment of being admitted into the manse, 
treading on the carpet as if it had been red-hot, and 
occupying the very smallest possible corner of their 
chairs. After a final benediction had been pro- 
nounced, the " best man" poured out a glass of 
whiskey, which we were expected to taste, wishing 
the bride happiness and prosperity in the far distant 
land where she was going in search of both. 

I think you are now beginning to yawn, and as 
the whole ambition of my pen is, to " add a feather 
to the lightsome hours of your leisure," it is time 
now to wish you good night, or to say, like the 
Scotch abigail at Paris, " Bon more" 



LOCHALSH. 



The rivers flow, 

The woody valley warm and low, 
The windy summit, wild and high, 
Roughly rushing on the sky; 
The pleasant seat, the ruin'd tow'r, 
The naked rock, the shady bow'r. 

My dear Cousin, — ^You agree with me in liking 
a little scrap of quotation, even from a favourite and 
well-known poem, for the effect is the same as if a 
flower were plucked in a garden, and presented by 
a friend to your especial notice and admiration, so I 
generally begin by making myself welcome with a 
few lines from somebody, even though the author's 
name has escaped me. 

When Maturin the author was immersed in com- 
position, he always stuck a wafer on his forehead, 
to indicate that he must on no pretext be disturbed, 
and he was quite right, for it ruins a whole train of 
thought to be asked what o'clock it is. Professor 
Airey has his study at Portsmouth dug out of the 
solid earth, to prevent any external noise in the docks 
from annoying him, and a certain friend of yours, 
when she has a letter to write, is denied to visiters 
dming the entire day, while her whole family must 



LOCHALSH. 199 

go through the house on tiptoe. You shall judge 
from this letter, whether the best situation for pro- 
moting fluency of style be not a small dark room in 
the Highlands, such as that we are now imprisoned 
in ; the windows encrusted with dust, and an asth- 
matic bagpipe playing within a few yards. A poet 
once published verses " on the rumbling of his car- 
riage wheels," and the excellent Robert Boyle record- 
ed some profound reflections on the subject of "sitting 
at ease in a rapidly driven chariot," but my remarks 
must be, on having no conveyance at all. We left 
Skye in a light skiff, which skimmed across the in- 
tervening ferry of a mile in breadth, to Lochalsh in 
Ross-shire, while we seemed almost sitting on the 
water, like the sea-birds around. Ferries are no 
grievance whatever in the Highlands, with such 
first-rate weather as we enjoyed this morning, when 
the grandest effects of light and shade, mists and 
sunshine, were exhibited, which an artist might 
fancy, but scarcely dare copy on canvass. We are 
grown such connoiseurs in mountain scenery, thaf I 
become every day more fastidious, but there is one 
charming peculiarity on the hills of Lochalsh, which 
I shall adopt in my own plantations, whenever I 
have any. The woods here are interspersed with a 
gorgeous profusion of laburnums, lilacs, rododen- 
drons, and the richest hawthorns, in a flush of blos- 
soms, all planted by the late proprietor, Sir Hugh 



200 LOCHALSH. 

Innes. Not a flowering shrub seems forgotten, and 
the whole has the look of a brilliant mosaic, on a 
dark back-ground. Here also we had nature's 
orchestra in perfection, a chorus of birds, accom- 
panied by a soft breeze of wind, and the liquid sound 
of the ocean breaking along its pebbly shore. This 
is surely one of the most beautiful places I ever saw ! 
To the left is Lochduich, in front the Isle of Skye, 
and to the right the Atlantic. Behind is an exten- 
sive well-sheltered basin of fertile land, beautifully 
laid out and screened from every blast, by a sweep 
of picturesque hills. The old mansion of Balmacarra 
is so close to the sea, it appears almost within water- 
mark, and, taking it as a house, makes no preten- 
sions to beauty, being a long low white-washed 
building, wanting only a tall chimney, to look like 
a cotton mill, and scarcely more picturesque than a 
row of bathing machines on the sand, but then, as 
Cinderella's sister observed about her shabby dress, 
" to make up for that," all we see around is magni- 
ficent, and we may therefore say, 

" If to the house some trifling errors fall, 
Look on the hills, and you'll forget them all " 

It was in this country that a proprietor, being 
once asked what he meant to do with all the ten- 
antry he was ejecting from their farms and cottages, 
angrily replied, "Lochduich is deep enough for 



LOCHALSH. 201 

tliem all !" — ^but far different has been the feeling of 
an English proprietor, who has acquired by mar- 
riage the wide domains of Lochalsh, and made him- 
self ever since one of the best Scotchmen in the 
Highlands. 

While every tongue is eloquent in his neighbour- 
hood, to praise that Christian liberality which has 
no limits, but the limits of his income, we heard by 
the way-side, unceasing instances of the energy and 
perseverance with which, for years past, he has en- 
deavoured to imitate our Divine Master in benefiting, 
good or bad, rich or poor, sick or well, every indi- 
vidual within the reach of his influence. No man's 
sorrows would last longer than the time occupied in 
telling them, if any effort on his part could " teach 
want to thrive, and grief to smile again," — the cares 
of others become his own by adoption ; and our 
boatmen pointed out with eager interest a hospital 
on a neighbouring eminence, where the homeless 
poor are sheltered, that those who are ignorant may 
be instructed, the sick supplied with medicine, the 
unemployed with work, and the destitute receive as 
liberal a supply of winter clothing annually, as if 
they were all going to Greenland. 

Solomon says, " there is that scattereth, yet in- 
creaseth. There is that maketh himself poor, yet 
hath great riches." When considering the enlight- 
ened Clu-istian motives dictating those good works, 
18 



202 . LOCHALSH. 

which have so long shunned observation, it occurred 
to me with surprise, as it had often done aheady, 
how much more obvious, generally, are the effects 
of superstition on the purses and pockets of its vo- 
taries, than of a purer and holier faith, which ought 
to be so much more influential. The presumptuous 
hope of purchasing heaven by their own meritorious 
actions, has caused the Roman Catholic churches 
and charitable institutions to be more hberally en- 
dowed than ours, and individuals of that persuasion, 
whatever be their motives, devote themselves more 
avowedly and exclusively to the exercise of good 
works than the generality of Protestants, who, too 
frequently, give to charity only the sweepings of 
their extravagance. Even Hindoos and Mahome- 
tans exhibit a self-sacrificing spirit, which, while 
we pity the delusion that excites it, should yet be a 
solemn admonition to Christians, that they should 
not carelessly enjoy their higher privileges, but re- 
member with solemn awe, that " they who know 
their Master's will and do it not, shall be beaten 
with many stripes." It is true that Protestants pre- 
fer inward principle and feelings, to external demon- 
strations, but still their light should shine distinctly, 
that all men, seeing the good deeds of Divinely 
taught Christians, may learn to glorify their Father 
which is in heaven. It is said that Wesley, during 
his life, gave .£30,000 in charity, while his ow^n 



LOCHALSH. 203 

personal expenses were only £28 a-year, and it 
would be well if we could all act upon that fre- 
quently quoted and seldom observed maxim of the 
excellent Howard, " a Christian should make his 
luxuries yield to another man's comforts, his com- 
forts to another man's necessities, and even his ne- 
cessities to another man's extremity." We may 
well exclaim, like Hannah More, " how cheap is 
charity, how dear is luxury," when, in the present 
day, ladies will give ten guineas for a pocket hand- 
kerchief, who would scarcely spare ten shillings for 
all the woes of all mankind. 

Before my face my handkerchief I spread, 
To hide the flood of tears I did— not shed. 

I have often thought, even with respect to those 
who wish to be conscientious in their expenditure 
on charity, that the rich scarcely consider how 
great is the disproportion between a man of .£10,000 
a-year subscribing his guinea, and another with only 
j£100 a-year giving his shilling. Both are thought 
to have equally done their duty, but unless men cal- 
culate a regular proportion of their income, as being 
due to charity, it will always continue to be an 
affair of impulse and accident, rather than of princi- 
ple, and that alone will bring wealthy Christians up 
to the standard of Scriptural liberality. The most 
affluent persons often sit gravely and solemnly in 



204 LOCHALSH. 

their pews at church, hearing all the most powerful 
motives of the gospel urged on their consciences, to 

give liberally as unto God, and the result is a 

shilling ! For charity sermons, one shilling seems 
generally the ne plus ultra of human exertion, and 
children half-price ! 

At the Church of St. Mary's, Woolnoth, some 
years ago, the congregation were startled and inte- 
rested to hear, that their prayers were requested by 
" a young man who had succeeded to a very consid- 
erable fortune, and earnestly desired to be preserved 
from the snares to which it would expose him !" 
How true it is, too true perhaps, to need remark, 
that the temporal gifts of Providence are frequently 
used as a screen to hide him from our thoughts, — 
health encourages a belief that we shall not soon 
be summoned into his presence, cheerfulness degen- 
erates into levity, talents lead to worldly ambition, 
and wealth becomes a means of dissipated extrava- 
gance ; but we have now entered a neighbourhood, 
where those to whom Providence has denied all 
these gifts are taught to rejoice in the hope of a 
better and more enduring inheritance. Here the 
more friendless, destitute, and suffering people are, 
and the more to be avoided or despised by ordinary 
men, so much the more benevolently are they suc- 
coured and lodged at Lochalsh, while missionaries 
are constantly superintending the district, crossing 



KYLE HACKEN. 205 

even to Skye, to ascertain the wants of the poor, 
especially in respect to religious instruction, and the 
distribution of Bibles is on so large a scale, that 
some time ago, when a steamboat was leaving Glas- 
gow, one article in the list of cargo was, "Three 
tons of Bibles for Balmacarra House." That is a 
gift which will bring a blessing alike on him who 
gives, and on those who receive, while the eagerness 
with which they are in demand, would astonish the 
many who consider the Bible as an unwelcome 
creditor on their time, instead of rejoicing in it as 
the charter of their everlasting salvation. 

The landlady at Kyle Hacken told us, that last 
year an impostor, feigning sickness, went to Balma- 
carra House, where he obtained lodging and attend- 
ance for three weeks, during which he received 
incessant kindness, and talked in the most exem- 
plary manner. At length he thought fit to recover, 
and having obtained so handsome a donation, that 
it might have maintained him luxuriously for a year, 
he came to her inn, calling for so many successive 
draughts of whiskey, that she refused at length to 
supply more. The simple hostess thought him su- 
pernaturally wicked, because he assumed a different 
accent every time she entered his parlour, and her 
description sounded to me very like some second- 
rate actor from one of the minor theatres. " Some- 
times he spoke quite Irish, ma'am ! then he seemed 
like a Frenchman; and he could have as good 
18* 



206 LOCHALSH- 

a Scotch tongue in his head as any one, when he 
hked." It was evident, at any rate, that he had 
represented " The TartufFe" to some purpose, where 
he came from previously ! 

It is proved by the observation and experience 
of all charitably disposed persons, that nothing re- 
ceived entirely gratis is adequately appreciated by 
the poor, whether it be education, food, medicines, 
clothing, or Bibles, unless they pay some nominal 
proportion of the value ; and it was remarked of a 
philanthropic clergyman lately, rather indiscriminate 
in his charities, that he went about " with a Bible 
in one hand, and eighteen pence in the other, 
bribing the whole parish into pauperism." Cer- 
tainly those only who are lost to all sense of self- 
respect would accept of alms, unless urged to it by 
hopeless necessity. Even in England, where the 
same feeling of laudable independence does not 
exist, we almost invariably find the free seats in a 
church comparatively empty, because none like to 
appear publicly as a pauper ; but if the poor can be 
induced to begin a Provident fund for their own 
relief, lodging the very smallest sums at first, and 
gradually acquiring habits of frugality and diligence, 
they would themselves be astonished at the gradual 
result ! In Leeds, last year, the poor were enabled 
to place in the care of their parish clergyman no 
less a sum than .£5000. 

We crossed in a low-sided skiff, under a sky 



LOCHALSH. 207 

SO lowering and dark, that no storm which ever 
raged could have exceeded what I expected ; yet it 
all passed away, like many other false alarms, 
showing what a good plan it is never to torment 
ouiselves with the anticipation of evil, as we have 
always quite enough for present use without bor- 
rowing from the future. The most beautiful object 
we saw during our voyage from Skye to Ross-shire, 
was an elegant yacht which belongs to the propri- 
etor of Lochalsh, with its white sails glittering in 
the sun, and spread out to catch the light breeze 
which carried us along over the brightly burnished 
ocean. Our steersman redoubled the interest with 
which we watched its graceful movements, by men- 
tioning the errand on which it is daily employed. 
Through this charming strait ten or twenty vessels 
pass sometimes in a morning, going to and from 
Ireland, and even to America, while not one of these 
ships can elude the vigilance with which they are 
waylaid and boarded by this light skiff, canying a 
missionary on board, who offers Bibles gratis to any 
of the crew who may be unprovided. The sailore 
being generally Irish, are not often very deeply 
versed in the alphabet, so they are sometimes as ill 
off after receiving the precious gift as before, but 
we may hope in most instances that the promise of 
Scripture may be realized, " Cast thy bread upon 
the waters, and thou shalt find it after many days." 



208 LOCHALSH. 

This friendly visitation is usually received with 
gratitude and respect ; but, on one occasion, an 
Irish vessel, manned with Roman Catholics, passing 
along under a favourable breeze, observed the yacht 
hailing them, and lay to for some time, but when 
the object of their detention was made known, the 
Captain, furiously irritated, threw all the Bibles 
overboard. Thus most unfortunately for himself 
and his crew he did not exemplify the proverb of 
Solomon, " every man is the friend of him that giv- 
eth gifts." 

During our short voyage, I had the amusement 
of seeing a strange vessel double the point and enter 
Lochduich, when instantly the little yacht hastened 
out from her ambuscade in the bay, and bore down 
upon the new comer in gallant style. She was lit- 
erally armed with Bibles, and ammunitioned with 
tracts ; and it was curious to watch the unconscious 
stranger, tacking about for some time, quite unob- 
servant of the little missionary bark in pursuit. At 
one time we could have fancied a perfect race be- 
tween the two vessels, both of which were beauti- 
fully manoeuvred, tacking and re-tacking, beating up 
against the wind, and coursing along with every sail 
set, till at length the larger ship lay to, and was 
successfully boarded by the crew of friendly assail- 
ants. How very much I should have liked to wit- 
ness the scene which followed, and even our 



LOCHALSH. 209 

boatmen, who had watched with eager interest till 
the encounter took place, dropped thek oars for a 
moment, while the interview commenced, as if they 
had ahnost hoped to overhear the dialogue, — ^but — 
what has become of my pens and paper ! — all van- 
ished into thin air, and not so much ink left as will 
dot an i or stroke a i / This comes of approaching 
the entrance to a private house, therefore I must 
>'ield to necessity, and before my desk finally closes, 
wish you a friendly adieu. 



GLEN SHEIL. 



And this gay ling, with all its purple flow'rs, 
A man of leisure might admire for hours ; 
And then how fine this herbage ! Men may say 
A heath is barren ; nothing is so gay ! 

Crabbe. 

My dear Cousin, — We used to be much diverted 
at the lady who once said, her own ideas were so 
fine, it perfectly vulgarized them when they were 
clothed in words ; but I fear that this will be too 
much the case with my description of the scenery 
we passed through to-day, as the printers have for- 
gotten to put language in the dictionary that can 
adequately express ray admiration of Glen Sheil, a 
place so little frequented by tourists, that I may rest 
my hopes of pleasing you on that maxim of Boileau, 
with which I am sure you will agree, " Tous les 
epitres sont hons, pourvu quails soient 7iouveai(cc.^' 

Having been called at a shockingly early hour 
in the morning, with a sleep-no-more knock at my 
door, I found myself, not long afterwards, seated in 
a little dot of a boat, proceeding up Lochalsh and 
Lochduich with a favourable breeze, yet so light, 
that, to assist the rowers, we hoisted our umbrellas 
for sails. Along these romantic shores, shut in by 



GLEN SHEIL. 211 

green mountains of every shape and shade, we were 
surprised to observe that almost every building in 
sight was either a church or a manse, but where the 
congregations were burrowing we could not dis- 
cover. In the course of an hour we must have seen 
the habitations of a whole presbytery, and we passed 
one of the prettiest pleasure-boats I ever saw, be- 
longing to a minister of Kintail, careering across the 
bay at full speed, its white sails gracefully dipping 
almost into the tide. 

One of the hills we saw, named Ratachan, car- 
ries a zig-zag road over its very siunmit, measuring 
altogether some miles. For travelling round this 
with a carriage, it would be desirable to yoke in a 
pair of goats rather than horses. An Englishman, 
who drove his carriage over this almost impassable 
track some time ago, took off his hat after the horses 
had safely scrambled to the top, saying, with a 
low bow, " Farewell, Mr. Ratachan, may I never 
see your face again !" 

At the foot of this ladder-hke road we passed 
Ratachan House, which, having been sold by Lord 
Seaforth, became the property of a Lowlander, Mr. 
Dick. The Macraes, enthusiastically attached to 
their hereditary feudal chief, considered the new laird 
an interloper, but might have become resigned to 
the change, had he not been convicted of calling 
them " barbarians !" Provoked at this aifront, they 



212 GLEN SHEIL. 

treated the stranger as nursery-maids treat fretful 
children, giving them " something to cry for." The 
clan Macrae rose in numbers, threw his sheep over 
the precipices, fired in at his windov^s, and commit- 
ted so many outrages, as almost to justify all he had 
said, till at length the unfortunate landed proprietor 
hastily departed. 

Our boatmen landed us in safety at a little inn, 
near the head of Glen Sheil, and departed, after 
which, to our consternation, we discovered that 

A had been misinformed as to the facilities of 

transport, as no conveyance of any description could 
be had, — not so much as a bathing-machine or a 
wheel-barrow, — and we had thirty-six miles to go ! 
The old proverb says, that " misfortunes come on 
horseback, but go away on foot;" and we seemed 
at any rate destined to walk off in company with 
ours, as we stood helplessly stranded on the shore, 
ready, like Richard the Third, to give our kingdom 
for a horse, but in vain. I had never yet tried the 
Irishman's plan, who rode out every day, but always 
forgot his horse ; and I began to wonder how Jeanie 
Deans progressed during her long promenade to 
London. Certainly, in so remote and unprovided a 
place, it would be but fair to display a ticket on the 
pier, saying, " No thoroughfare this way !" 

" It is a long lane that has no turning," and, in 
the very depth of our perplexity, affairs unexpect- 



GLEN SHEIL. 213 

ecUy took a brighter aspect. For the rest of" my hfe 
I shall always speak more respectfully than hitherto 
of that necessary evil, a letter of introduction, as y\e 
had fortunately been provided with one from Mr. 
Cameron, the provost of Dingwall, to Captain Mac- 
rae, a resident gentleman in the neighbomhood. On 
hearing of our predicament, he not only insisted on 
lending us his gig, with a servant riding behind, to 
bring it back, but he also made a point of our ta- 
king luncheon with him before setting out. Our 
trunks having proved too heavy for the carriage, 
Mr. Linton, an extensive farmer in the district, most 
obligingly volunteered his own services to convey 
them, and thus, before an hour had elapsed, we were 
in full progress with a procession of two borrowed 
gigs and an out-rider, through the splendid moun- 
tains of Glen Sheil. During ThurtelPs trial, one of 
the witnesses, who bore testimony to his respecta- 
bility, being asked what was meant by " respect- 
able," confidently replied, " He keeps his gig, Sir !" 
but we looked more than respectable now, with a 
perfect train of them, and the road is so excellent, it 
really deserves a mail coach. All around was rug- 
ged, solitary, and silent, while the mountains w^ere 
like a perpendicular wall on every side, or a long 
range of sugar-loaves, varied by a numerous and 
\ aluable assortment of rocks and heather. 

A passed this way several years ago, and 

19 



214 GLEN SHEIL. 

thinks the hills not at all grown since then, while 
the fir forests are considerably thinned, which makes 
a lamentable alteration ; and the aboriginal inhab- 
itants, who all bore the name of Macrae, are begin- 
ning to be mingled with settlers from other clans. 
Mr. Linton related, that, about twenty years ago, he 
was the first stranger who ventured to " squat" in 
this glen, and so violent were the Macraes for non- 
intrusion, that he underwent a siege in his own 
farm-house, till a military escort was sent, for the 
protection of his sheep, his wife, and himself, after 
which, at last, his own conciliatory measures suc- 
ceeded in pacifying them ; but he ended his narra- 
tive with remarking, "It was lucky for us that the 
Highlanders had fought all their battles before our 
time. There are places here where the king's 
troops set a' the trees and heather in a low." 

The Cheviot sheep are too heavy for those steep 
mountains, and Mr. Linton mentioned an almost in- 
credible number that he had lost, by their toppling 
over precipices. The Macraes were a numerous 
clan, but tributary to the Mackenzies, and went 
by the name of " Seaforth's shirt," being always 
nearest to that chieftain in battle. Here the two 
united clans fought their last against the English, 
in 1719, when the banished Earl of Seaforth sum- 
moned his adherents around him, and was danger- 
ously wounded in the conflict. A Dutch colonel 



CLUNY. 2 15 

was, on that occasion, killed by the Highland 
troops, and his grave was pointed out to us on a 
hill near the river, covered with tufts of nettles, a 
suitable ornament, w^ith which the soil has decorated 
an enemy's tomb. Not far off, a deep pool is shown, 
called " The battle lynn," where a large deposit of 
battle-axes and weapons w^as recently found, fit for 
nothing now but the Antiquarian Museiun. 

Notwithstanding frequent showers, A made 

a full stop every now and then, as much at leisure 
as if the day had been a perfect paragon, while we 
athnired and criticised the changing panorama 
around. On some hills the light drooping foliage 
of the birch, hanging in draperies to the very ground, 
contrasted with the tall, stiff, dark-looking fir-trees, 
gave me completely the idea of several graceful 
ladies, courtseying down the hill, in company with 
a numerous party of gentlemen ! Now, I pique my- 
self on that comparison, so you must positively not 
ridicule it ! 

We rested that night at the little inn of Cluny, 
where on all the plates at dinner, these words were 
inscribed, " Life is short, so spend it well." Cer- 
tainly no one w^ll spend more of it than they can 
help here, as the very necessaries of life are luxuries 
unattainable on any terms : my bed was a mere 
hole in the wall, our dinner consisted of real buttered 
eggs, with very salt ham, and we had not even the 



216 INVERMORRISTON. 

consolation of being angry at their many deficiencies, 
as the poor people were so perfectly civil and well- 
meaning, that they evidently did their little best, 
and almost slammed the door off its hinges with 
empressement, in flying to obey om- most trifling 
order. I pity above everything, those persons who 
lead a life of continual care about their own com- 
forts; the occasional want of them, is certainly 
a most salutary admonition to contentment in 
general, and I should like much to ascertain the ex- 
act amount of convenience promised in an advertise- 
ment, which appeared in the newspaper lately, of a 
shooting quarter, where gentlemen might " rough it 
with comfort." Undoubtedly that was not our happy 
lot, either at Cluny, or when, after a drive of many 
miles down the fflen, throuo;h natural forests which 
top the highest hills, we arrived next morning before 
breakfast at Invermorriston, where a change of ad- 
ministration was taking place at the inn, and the old 
landlord, in the process of transferring his furniture 
to a successor, had heaped every article miscellane- 
ously together at the door, for inspection. Nothing 
is done in the Highlands without an accompaniment 
of whiskey, the flavour of which pervaded every cor- 
ner of the house so powerfully, that any tee-totaller 
would have committed a breach of his oath, by 
merely inhaling the air, while the waiter had no time 
to W(iit, the maid was as useless and sulky as an 



INVERMORRISTON. 217 

American help, and the horses were all absent on 

perpetual leave. In our extremity A went to 

consult that important functionary, the factor of 
Gle'nmoriston, a Mr. Sinclair, who had arrived to 
instal the new landlord, and he came to our parlour 
full of civil regret, but reiterating the most positive 
assurance, that our case was without remedy, as the 
horses were all " sorry that a previous engagement 
prevented them from having the honour of waiting 
on us." He really looked as anxious and distressed 
as the cashier of a bank when there is a run upon it, 
and seemed willing to do as much as was possible, 
and rather more, in our behalf, but in vain. The 
mail-gig to Inverness, which runs three times a-week, 
was, of course, going the wrong way for us that 
morning, and unless we could have got a press-gang 
to assist us, none of the boatmen seemed inclined to 
row up any part of Loch Ness. Seeing that nothing 
could be done, I sat down in despair to eat a hearty 
breakfast, and to form myself into a committee of 
ways and means, while the factor, who seemed of 
a sociable turn, hovered about the table, and fell 
into conversation. Strangere must be rather scarce 
commodities in this neighbourhood, where no facility 
is afforded for coming or going, and in the course of 
a long dialogue, the important fact came out, that 

A was of Mr. Sinclair's own clan, and brother 

to the M. P. for Caithness. The consequence was 
19* 



218 FORESTS. 

quite magical ! Our friend had been at Thurso 
Castle, knew everything, and everybody there, was 
delighted to meet us, ordered up a glass of whis- 
key, drank our healths, and placed forthwith both 
a gig and a pleasure-boat at our immediate disposal ! 
I was perfectly bewildered at my own good fortune ! 
Cinderella's god-mother was nothing to this ! Con- 
veyances by land or water had sprung up around us 
like mushrooms, and I felt now, as if a whole stand 
of hackney coaches were v/aiting at the door. 

Being anxious to give the very least possible 
quantity of trouble,we preferred the boat, especially 
seeing so very fine a day, that Loch Ness was likely 
to prove smoother than the best Macadamised road. 
Mr. Sinclair escorted us to the quay, across a daisied 
meadow of such delicious looking pasture, that any 
one might have eaten it with pleasure, and we pro- 
ceeded through a shady glen decorated with birch 
and hazel, where the birds were all gossiping around, 
and the river audibly trickling over its pebbly bed. 
Here we saw a famous salmon leap, in which the 
fish spring up seven or eight feet, but never clear 
the full height, while they exhaust their powers irit 
vain endeavours, like so many others who wish to 
rise in the world, and attempt too much. 

Who could have anticipated, that the invention of 
railways would prostrate many of om' finest High- 
land forests! but so it is! all innovations in this 



FORESTS. 219 

world produce unexpected results in quarters where 
they could not have been anticipated, and many of 
the most beautiful hills in this neighbourhood v/ill 
soon be "all shaven and shorn," owing to the high 
price given for fir and larch trees, to act as sleepers 
on the railways. Every Highland proprietor now, 
seems, one way or other, to get jG 10,000 for his 
forests, whatever state they be in ! Mr. Grant of 
Glenmoriston has lately sold <£ 10,000 worth of 
standing wood to an English Company, w^hose saw- 
mills are visible on the mountain sides in full action, 
and nothing can be more curious than to superintend 
their operations. The trunk of a tree can be split 
into planks, during, as Lord Duberly would say, 
" the twinkling of a bed-post." It is laid on the 
block entire, emits a soimd exactly resembling a 
long, loud, shrill scream, and falls into slices before 
your eyes. 

On the outskirts of almost every great forest in 
the north, several of those odious machines may be 
observed, conspicuous from the fiesh deal boards of 
which they are built, and prepared to guillotine all 
our unoffending trees. Alas ! for Braemar ! Strath- 
-glass ! the Drhuim ! and Culloden ! we are paying 
a P. P. C. visit to the falling forests of Scotland, 
and if everybody cuts, while nobody plants, the 
consequences are obvious. As the Highland Soci- 
ety presents a prize annually to the proprietor who 



220 LOCH NESS. 

raises the greatest number of trees in that year, I 
wish they would oifer another to the one who cuts 
down fewest. We are told it is provided in the en- 
tail of Rothiemarchus, that, for every tree which is 
levelled, two must be planted, and I wish all High- 
land lairds would do the same, and remember the 
advice of Dumbiedykes, " Aye be sticking in a tree 
— it will be growing while you are sleeping." Sub- 
stitutes have been provided on the estate of Glen- 
moriston, merely by enclosing large tracts of land, 
which all produce birch, fir, and hazel, as naturally 
as heather, but this fencing system is seldom done 
on so liberal a scale elsewhere, because trees inter- 
fere with sheep, the true grandees of the Highlands, 
more illustrious there than either forests or tenantry. 
They are the black-legs of Scotland, fleecing the 
poor people out of their homes and livelihoods, 
while they strip the hills and groves perfectly bare. 
I wish we could have mutton without sheep ! Ev- 
ery peat-bog here exhibits one mass of roots and 
fibres, showing that the Highlands once needed 
" clearing" as much as America. 

After stepping into our welcome conveyance, a 
pretty little skiff, rowed by two fine-looking Locha- 
ber men, we glided up Loch Ness, the smooth sur- 
face of which was so like a sheet of glass, that 
every time the oars dipped they seemed to break a 
valuable mirror. The hills displayed one richly- 



LOCH NESS. 221 

tinted mass of birch, oak, and alder, enlivened by 
the gay mountain-ash and hawthorn, all so closely 
crowded, that you could scarcely have stuck in an- 
other leaf, and the whole magnificent scene was re- 
flected upside down in the water so distinctly, that 
we could scarcely tell the substance from the shadow. 
This effect was most amusinof, as the hiohroad 
skirted along the water side for many miles, while 
far down in the crystal tide we saw a repetition of 
every traveller, wood-cutter, cart or carriage — no ! 
there were no carriages — but abundance of cattle 
and horses. For the first time in my life I now saw 
in the water, exactly w^hat we used, as children, to 
suppose the antipodes would appear, with a sky far 
beneath, while men, trees, and animals were perfect- 
ly at ease, with their heads downwards, and their 
feet supernaturally adhering to the earth. The ap- 
pearance of amazing depth, occasioned by seeing the 
clouds reflected so far below us, had a sublime effect. 
In the veiy midst of our prosperous voyage, we 
had an accident ! One great fault in letters is, that 
you cannot work up the interest to any breathless 
degree, because the writer must, in all probability, 
have sunived, which we fortunately did, but one of 
the oars suddenly snapped in two, and threw the 
boatman on his face. We instantly paddled to- 
wards the nearest landing place, which turned 
out to be near an ale-house, where the tavern- 



222 URQUHART CASTLE. 

keeper was exceedingly civil in making us welcome 
to the best oar he had. Upon this, the rowers mod- 
estly suggested that, on so hot a day, after their se- 
vere labour, and the unexpected accident, it would be 

extremely acceptable if A would order, for the 

good of the house, " a taste of whiskey." If the 
whole Temperance Society had been on board our 
little skiff they must have consented, and a mode- 
rate supply was instantly produced. Highlanders 
seem all to think they should be preserved in spirits ; 

but A , to avoid all danger of excess, threw a 

considerable proportion into the Loch, gravely re- 
marking, that it would bring us " luck !" Our 
friends would evidently have preferred the whiskey 
to the luck, but divided all that remained, drank our 
healths, and proceeded with renewed energy. We 
soon afterwards landed near the old remnant of Ur- 
quhart Castle, once a Royal fortress, and now be- 
longing to the Grants of Grant. A few tattered 
fragments yet rise above the lofty rock on which 
they were reared, looking like chimneys, and as if 
the precipice were the castle. Here sieges and mas- 
sacres took place in the stirring times of Edward 
the First, when, like a bull in a China shop, the 
English had it all their own way, and broke down 
so many of our fortresses, though Scotland at last 
proved herself unconquerable. 

After going one mile inland, we discovered a 



DRUMNADROCHIT. 223 

peculiarly comfortable, praise-worthy inn at Drum- 
nadrochit. The name puts my spelling to a severe 
test ! It is doing the public a service to encourage 
so well kept an establishment ; therefore, instead of 
pushing on by forced marches upon Inverness, we 
subsided into our arm-chairs, for the good of the 
house, and talked over our adventurous escape from 
Skye and its lacinity. The paragon of landladies 
had prepared an excellent dinner, on the chance of 
any travellers wanting it, and sent us up, on the 
very shortest imaginable notice, a roast joint, the 
only fresh pastry I almost ever saw in travelling, — 
for you would fancy, at inns in general, that the 
tarts were all bought second-hand, — and the most 
elaborately fanciful dish of potatoes I ever saw, 
being tastefully turned out, like a shape of blanc- 
mange, with a pattern of grapes and vine leaves on 
the top, which might have done for a marble chim- 
ney-piece. So curiously decorated a style is not 
always the safest in a kitchen, if one only knew the 
worst ; and I remember once hearing of an officer 
in Ireland, who was partaking of some ingeniously 
contrived eggs, the outside being of blanc-mange 
and the inside of jelly, when an old lady remarked, 
how glad she was she liked them, as it had been 
her employment all that day " to blow out the 
yolks, and to blow in the blanc-mange !" 

I have been informed that Mr. Elphinstone, who 



224 GLEN URQUHART. 

knows the whole round world by sight, once pro- 
nounced Glen Urquhart and Strathglass to be the 
most beautiful landscapes he had ever seen, which 
will save me the trouble of going to India, or the 
antipodes ; but, in the meantime, we delayed not an 
hour this evening to enjoy a drive through the ro- 
mantic beauties of Glen Urquhart, in a little double- 
seated phaeton, drawn by a fine Arabian-looking 
grey horse, which might have trotted for a wager. 
I discovered unexpectedly during our progress that 
a morsel of South Wales has certainly been, some 
how or other, shuffled in here ! The rich meadows, 
the sloping green banlvs, the luxuriant wood, the 
wilderness of sweet briars, the neat cottages, and 
the profusion of tasteful villas, are all quite Welsh. 
A lake, like a sea of liquid light, at the top of this 
glen, is as closely beset with ornamental mansions 
and cottages as either Hampstead Heath or Wim- 
bledon Common, and nearly all seem tenanted by 
Grants, who are very fortunate people to have got 
so delightful a " location." An extraordinary pro- 
fusion of roses in all the hedges and fields gave a 
full-dressed look to the country, as if it were hung 
with garlands for a fete. The tall pyramids of fox- 
glove seemed too splendid for encountering the dust 
of a highroad, and, altogether, nature here had 
made herself quite extravagantly fine. Several of 
the hills wore on their shoulders gold epaulettes of 



GLEN URQUHART. 225 

whin and yellow broom, while others were clothed 
with gloomy masses of fir. If you wish to make a 
very beautiful table or cabinet for your boudoir, no 
wood looks half so well as the broom, which may 
be had here five or six inches in diameter, and beau- 
tifully striped in light and dark shades, hke ivory 
and ebony. This was an idea, long ago, of your 

friend Lady 's, but no one else ever tried it, 

and the most ingenious things require to be recom- 
mended, for, as the proverb truly says, "The tongue 
of the fool is often requisite to the inventions of the 
wise." 

More might be said hereof to make a proof, 
Yet more to say were more than is enough. 



20 



FALL OF FOYERS. 



" Time and I against any two." 

Spanish Proverb. 

My dear Cousin,— ^Nobody can say now that 
I have not seen the Fall of Foyers ! This morning 
we stood below and above the cascade, took it in 
profile and in full face, weighed, measured, criti- 
cised, admired, and, in short, did every thing but 
swallow it. You would perhaps have been tempted 
to re-echo the exclamation of Wilson the artist, on 
his first arrival here, " well done, water !" but I 
begin to suspect that my Highland second-sight has 
at some time or other favoured me with a vision of 
Niagara, as nothing short of that seems ever likely 
to satisfy my craving for water ; and I must venture 
to disclose, in the strictest confidence, that my first 
sensation was disappointment ! We have ' often re- 
marked, that children never will appear to advan- 
tage when most wished to do so ; and it is the same 
with cascades, which always happen to be particu- 
larly quiet and stupid when any one goes to see 
them. Instead of the sublime, I saw only the beau- 
tifiil; but certainly the scenery around is worth 
coming all the distance to enjoy, being more like a 
poet's dream than a reahty, — the rough rocky fore- 



FALL OF FOYERS. 227 

ground, the park of Foyers behind, bright and sunny, 
as if it had been washed over with gamboge ; the 
charming ghmpses of the lake, surrounded by richly 
clothed banks, and the dark sterile mountains be- 
yond. The cascade falls 212 feet, shrieking and 
roaring among rocks all sheathed in glittering foam, 
and ends in a deep pool, which looked blacker than 
the ink I am writing with. One curious rock is 
there, formed by nature into a colossal head, up to 
the chin in water, as if a giant were drowning. 
The eyes and nose are quite perfect, and I pointed 
him out to the guide, who agreed that he seemed 
almost alive, but he is only visible when the stream 
falls very low. To-day, instead of rushing over the 
higher points, it was merely decanted through a 
narrow gorge, like the neck of a large bottle, with 
rocks closing over the top. A long narrow point 
of rock, like a lofty wall, with a giddy precipice on 
both sides, and the tumultuous water beneath, is 
considered the best place from whence to see the 
fall, if you do not fall yourself, and, when standing 
on its utmost verge, we could form a perfect con- 
ception how the Buccaneers formerly put prisoners 
to death by making them " walk the plank." 

- Near this we met a poor beggar, who showed 
us the certificate of a magistrate, that he had per- 
mission to beg, having once unfortunately ventured a 
step too far and fallen over. His thigh was dislo- 



228 FALL OF FOYERS. 

cated, and he lay all night on a rock, perfectly 
helpless, till accidentally discovered by a shepherd's 
dog. It is curious that those wonderfully sagacious 
animals have, in some degree, the instinct belong- 
ing to every various species of their kind; and 
this creature, acting as any dog of St. Bernard's 
would have done, ran instantly for his master, who 
came, expecting to find one of his own sheep in 
distress, and rescued the miserable sufferer. We 
gave him a trifle, and I was amused to see the guide 
immediately afterwards ask our petitioner for some 
tobacco, of which, in spite of his poverty, he pro- 
duced a plentiful supply, and shared it liberally 
with his friend. 

If the fall of Foyers were mine, I should cer- 
tainly make a better path for travellers, as the toil- 
some ascent is through a sea of mud, but we felt re- 
warded, if the scramble had been twice as long, 
and ten times as dirty. Several fields we saw here 
were almost at right angles with the ocean, and on 
the summit of a lofty mountain, called Mealfourvo- 
nie, the guide assured us that there is a well of 
water so unfathomably deep, the bottom has never 
yet been found, but he added, that "it pierces 
through the whole hill, and any one throwing in a 
stick or a stone, if he has luck, may find it after- 
wards floating on Loch Ness." I should be sorry if 
my luck in life depended on believing this. 



LOCH NESS. 229 

Crossing Loch Ness on our return from Foyers, 
we encountered more sea than in all the other 
Highland ferries united, and if an accident had oc- 
curred here, it would have been a very paltry and 
pitiful termination to our adventures. I should 
have been as much mortified and surprised, as the 
soldier killed some time ago on the Portobello sands, 
who said it was hard to end his life at a mere re- 
view, after escaping the dangers of Waterloo. 
The water of Foyers, being evidently of a tumultu- 
ous disposition, does not recover its equanimity in 
Loch Ness, which is never known to be frozen in 
winter, and to-day our little boat hopped along on 
the waves with terrifying agility, while the boatman 
politely apologized for its being so old and rickety, 
assuring me that he expected a new one next day, 
though that certainly did not avail us much at the 
moment, when I expected every instant that we 
should be, to use a Scotch expression," whummelled." 
This little skiff is rowed in general by a Highland 
girl, but the ferrywoman was absent, which I 
regretted, as she is said to pull better than any 
man. You would be amused to see what useful 
people women are in the far north. They drive 
the carts, hold the ploughs, in short, do all the 
manual labour, and if a cottager loses his horse or 
ox, or any other beast of burden, he marries a wife 
to make up the difference. 

Our drive from Dixunnadrochit to Inverness, fif- 
20* 



230 INVERNESS. 

teen miles, partly along the edge of Loch Ness, 
combined all English, Welsh, and Highland beauty, 
and though we are becoming fastidious about scene- 
ry, after seeing so much of the best, this appeared 
almost beyond criticism. The usual difficulty oc- 
curs, however, on some of the mountains, to group 
the plantations becomingly, and to-day we observed 
three of the hills with perfectly ro\md clmnps on 
their summits, cut so exactly circular, that you 
would imagine they had been cropped with a basin 
over their heads. 

In our way we passed Dochfour, belonging to 
Mr. Baillie. It has a charming park to boast of, a 
beautiful lake, and abundance of venerable trees, 
which formerly made a narrow escape of their 
lives, a ci-devant proprietor having condemned 
them all to the axe, but when advertised for sale, 
an obliging friend of the next heir clandestinely 
purchased the whole lot, and asked the laird if 
they might be allowed, as a favour, to grow till 
wanted. This uncommon proposal excited no sus- 
picion, and the old gentleman, when showing his 
grounds, often mentioned as a good story against 
the purchaser, that he had got not only the price, 
but the benefit of the trees, which had obtained so 
long a reprieve, they might perhaps be allowed 
*• to see him out," which accordingly they did, for 
his monument may now be conspicuously seen from 
the road, shaded by the far-spreading-boughs. 



INVERNESS. 231 

How unpleasant the final show off is, made by 
drivers and horses on entering a town ! Their 
whole speed is reserved for the narrowest lanes, ill- 
causewayed, and perfectly paved with children, 
flocks of whom may be seen flying in all directions, 
at our approach, like a covey of partridges after a 
shot has been fii'ed. We tilted over the streets and 
bridges of Inverness, at full career, grazing against 
carriages and people, while the horse became more 
and more excited, till at last with a rapid swing we 
turned a sharp corner, and wheeled up to the hotel, 
stopping with a crash as sudden as if a portcullis 
had fallen before us. 

An English gentleman once asked in company, 
with a bewildered look, " Pray ! can any one tell 
me, whether Edinburgh is north of Inverness, or 
Inverness north of Edinburgh !" Having practi- 
cally studied this obscure question, I can now testify 
to the truth of our commonly received opinions on 
their geographical position ; and those who travel 
one hundred and fifty miles nearer the pole, will 
find this Highland metropolis well w^orth exploring. 
The situation is magnificent, the inns and county 
jail first-rate, the harbour excellent ; in short, I 
could write you a letter as dry and uninteresting as 
a stone-tUke about this venerable city, but towns 
never describe well, and the larger they are, the 
more hopelessly tiresome the description becomes. 



232 INVERNESS. 

After all, what does it signify to you and me, how 
the people of Inverness are lodged, provided they be 
pleased themselves 1 Some streets are broad, others 
are narrow; some of the churches have towers, 
and others have none ; the river has a bridge, the 
castle has nearly disappeared, the jail has a mag- 
nificent steeple, and the new county rooms, built 
of bright scarlet stone, dazzle our sight, so that 
we must shade our eyes to look at them ! 

During a rainy Sunday at Inverness, we attended 
divine service at a small chapel. Within a church 
on the opposite side of the street, a preacher was 
holding forth at the same time, in tones so extremely 
vehement, that even when we sat in the pew of a 
different building, with a broad street between, it 
was perfectly startling to hear his noisy vocifera- 
tions. You would have supposed that some violent 
demagogue was angrily inciting a mob to insurrec- 
tion, rather than a minister of the gospel promul- 
gating the solemn and affecting doctrines of Chris- 
tianity ; and I could not but think, that, while no 
teacher ever said more awful truths than our Divine 
Saviour himself, yet in his tenderness and conamise- 
ration for the very worst of sinners, he probably 
preached very differently, seeking with all meekness 
and dignity to produce 

Faith's calm triumph, reason's steady sway, 
Not the brief lightning, but the perfect day. 



INVERNESS. 233 

If pulpit oratory were intended to inculcate merely 
one great effort, — to produce only a short lucid in- 
terval from the mental derangement of vrorldliness, — 
or if such a sacrifice were necessary, as that of the 
deluded Hindoos, who cast themselves vmder the car 
of Juggernaut, such excitement might draw out a 
corresponding impulse ; but for inspiring solemn 
truths, deep feelings, and steady principles, far more 
permanent impressions are likely to be made by an 
impressive tone of heartfelt conviction, — not by the 
flaming countenance and angry gesticulations of a 
special pleader, but by earnest, solemn, and ener- 
getic admonitions, like those of a parent or brother, 
who comes as an ambassador of Christ, to teach and 
encourage the many who are struggling through a 
stormy tide of worldly cares and temptations, and 
whose own spirit is filled with love to God, and 
charity to all men. 

Nothing convinced me more, how important it 
is to preserve a tone of dignified calmness on sacred 
subjects, than to hear that once, when a petition 
from the General Assembly of Scotland on Church 
politics was received with grave attention by the 
House of Lords, it was ended by some tremendously 
vehement language, and when a final period came, 
the astonished Peers burst into a simultaneous peal of 
laughter, on hearing that it was " Signed by The 
Moderator !" 



CAWDOR CASTLE. 



Faster come ! faster come t 
Faster and faster ! 

Pibroch, 

My dear Cousin, — ^You need no longer ask me 
where I have been, but where I have not been, for 
we are flying so incessantly from place to place, 
that I even sleep in a hurry, and grudge myself time 
to snatch a morsel of dinner ; but as it used to be 
said of the celebrated Lord Cullen, that if he dipped 
into a book for two minutes, he could talk about it 
for two years, you will think my way of dipping 
into a country is on a somewhat similar scale of 
proportion. 

We passed near Culloden moor to-day, and saw 
the dreary scene where Scotland's lance was shiv- 
ered, where her shield was broken, her banner of 
pride laid low, and where " the red eye of battle 
was shut in despair." Some miles beyond stands 
Cawdor Castle, about six centuries old, but with a 
roof still over its head, and surrounded by trees, 
which even Dr. Johnson condescended to notice 
with respect. " Hail, Thane of Cawdor ! This cas- 
tle hath a pleasant seat !" It is, moreover, garri- 
soned by a civil courtseying housekeeper, who pa- 



CAWDOR CASTLE. 235 

raded us about from one odd-looking room to anoth- 
er, apologizing for the very thing which most de- 
lighted me, — the rude uncivilized aspect of the 
whole place and furniture. I would have been dis- 
gusted by the sight of a modern luxury or comfort 
in such a scene, but every thing remains in the raw 
unfledged state of old times. No spring cushions, 
ottomans, footstools, or other unnecessaiy necessaries 
of modern life, but here the strait stiff chairs are 
great-grandfathers to any you ever sat in else- 
where ; the door is of solid iron, the wainscots are 
as unconscious of paint as when they came from the 
forest, and the entrance is through a portcullis and 
over a draw-bridge rattling on its chains, quite ready 
to repel an invasion. This primitive state of affairs is 
more attractive to visiters than to the owners, except 
in its present capacity of shooting box, and Cawdor 
Castle is now almost entirely deserted for Stackpole 
Court and Golden Grove, its more trimmed and 
decorated rivals in Wales. Golden Grove, with its 
richly poetical name, affords a singular exception to 
the nationality of the Welsh, as it was bequeathed 
by a primitive recluse named Vaughan, to the only 
Scotch gentleman probably possessing property in 
Wales. Pluralities in estates, as well as in livings, 
are not advantageous, and I sometimes wish for 
an act of Parliament, making it criminal, like po- 
lygamy, to keep two estates, so that those who in- 



236 CAWDOR CASTLE. 

herit as many, shall relinquish the one they like 
least to their nearest of kin, provided he settle there 
for life. 

The vaulted kitchen at Cawdor Castle is ex- 
cavated in solid rock, so that the cook lives like a 
toad in a stone, and the scullery is on a similar plan, 
with a low arched roof, looking quite like a natural 
cave. How many millions of dinners have been 
cooked in that grate, since the time when oxen 
were roasted whole, to the present day, when they 
appear in fancy dress, and assume French names ! 

We were shown a large iron box which the 
ancestor of Lord Cawdor received when this castle 
was about to be built. The casket is now empty, 
but was then filled with gold, destined to pay the 
whole expense of building, on the express condition 
that this treasure should be placed on a donkey's 
back, when the animal was to be turned loose, vdth 
a few strokes of the whip, and at the first place 
where he afterwards stood still, the foundation must 
immediately be laid. Many houses are so ill situ- 
ated, one might imagine that nothing wiser than a 
donkey had fixed on the site, but this long-eared 
architect excelled most " capability men." He 
paused near the river, beside a very fine thorn tree, 
and one of the rooms has been built round the stem, 
which yet stands bare and rugged, within the apart- 
ment, its root on the floor, and its head piercing the 



CAWDOR CASTLE. SSt 

ceiling. This has a singular effect, as if it had 
forced a way through the roof j and, if tradition 
speak the truth, this aged block of wood must now 
be at least six hundred years of age, coeval with 
the time of Macbeth, when the Thane of Cawdor 
was "a prosperous gentleman." 

In the external wall of Cawdor Castle, about 
half way from the summit, a thriving, full-grown 
gooseberry bush has contrived to take root, though 
we coidd not but wonder where it found any nour- 
ishment or support ! It clings to the interstices of 
a solid stone wall, nine feet thick, and there pro- 
duces an ample crop of gooseberries, the most gen- 
uine wall-fruit I have seen, which might have been 
gathered if we could have made a long arm, to 
reach about ten feet down from the nearest window\ 
Baron Munchausen's cherry tree growang on a stag's 
head was not much more surprising. 

In this delightful old castle we were shown King 
Duncan's chain armour. There are tour houses in 
Scotland where that monarch was undoubtedly mur- 
dered ; Glammis Castle, a blacksmith's hut near 
Forres, Inverness Castle, now superseded ])y the 
Jail, and Cawdor Castle, which appears to me the 
most appropriate scene for the occasion, being quite 
a ready-made tragedy in itself I walked slowly up 
the very steps which lady Macbeth ascended, trying 

to feel as like Mrs. Siddons as possible, but if A 

21 



238 CAWDOR CASTLE. 

had treated us to one of Kean's very best starts in 
Macbeth, he would have precipitated the whole 
party to the bottom of a steep spiral staircase. We 
reached, at length, a most ominous looking door, 
very low, and creaking on the hinges with a most 
unearthly sound, which opened into the fatal apart- 
ment, where there is a vaulted stone roof. I was 
wound up now, to behold a scene quite a la Shak- 
speare, but, alas ! a sad disappointment awaited us ! 
all within w^as fresh, clean, and new, exhibiting not 
so much as a grain of dust, or a stain of blood, and 
we were informed that an accident had destroyed 
every relic of antiquity. In the chimney of this old 
room, a colony of jack-daws established their nests, 
which took fire one night, when King Duncan's bed 
perished, and the whole proofs of the murder were 
destroyed. Another bed which we were shown in 
this house might have been substituted, as it was the 
most dismal piece of furniture I ever beheld, w4th 
plumes of black feathers at every corner, silver or- 
naments and velvet hangings, so that if mounted on 
wheels like a hearse, it would have been quite fit 
for the undertaker. 

You may trace out half the history of Scotland 
in this entertaining old castle ! I wish we had four 
pairs of eyes at least to look about us with ! We 
were next ushered into a crevice, which can scarce- 
ly be dignified with the name of a closet, where old 



CAWDOR CASTLE. 239 

Lord Lovat, at the age of eighty, remained in con- 
cealment during six weeks after escaping from the 
battle of Culloden. If we ever have to flee for our 
lives, I could not desire a better hiding-place ; for 
though the English troops had certain information 
that the aged peer was confined in this veiy house, 
they never succeeded in discovering him ! The en- 
trance is most curious and complicated, for I stood 
on the leads close beside the place without detecting 
a nook in which so much as his wig could have 
been harboured. A sort of supplementary elevation, 
like a chimney, rose above the roof, by placing a 
ladder against M'hich we scrambled to a narrow 
platform and there saw a nearly invisible door, 
scarcely wider than the entrance to a dog kennel. 
After creeping with difficulty into this aperture, we 
fomid an apartment under a pent roof, twnce the size 
of a bathing machine, where Lord Lovat remained, 
day after day, and week after week, almost within 
sight of his own magnificent estates. A veiy few 
miles off were the trees on which he formerly hanged 
so many of his own retainers, the halls in which he 
once executed tyrannical sway, and the house in 
which both his amiable, high-born wives successively 
wore out their miserable existences, in a species of 
rigid imprisonment. Early in life, he erected a mar- 
ble tablet in the parish church, bearing a splendid 
panegyric on himself, and when his friend Sir Rob- 



240 CAWDOR CASTLE. 

ert Monro remonstrated on the absiu'dity of this 
" romantic stuif," he said that his clan must believe 
whatever he told them. I wonder he did not leave 
an equally imaginary portrait of his countenance, 
rather than trust Hogarth's pencil, who found the 
temptation to caricature quite irresistible, and threat- 
ened, when Lord Lovat refused to pay for his pic- 
ture, that he would " add a tail, and sell it for the 
frontispiece of a menagerie." It is surprising he 
did not burn the painting at last, but he stands 
recorded, at his own request. 

To future times a libel and a jest. 

Had Lord Lovat been staunch to either side, our 
sympathy would have been greater, but a prospec- 
tive patent, creating him Duke of Fraser, nailed the 
weathercock of his opinions ; and such patents are 
often the best remedy for the hot and cold fits of a 
politician, who " foams a patriot to subside a peer." 

We gazed over the wall upwards of sixty feet 
high, where Lord Lovat, wrapped in blankets, was 
let down by ropes, at last, to make his escape ; and 
I became perfectly giddy when fancying the poor 
old peer, accustomed to his easy chair by the fireside, 
and his newspaper, thus launched into the air, like 
a spider on a thread, and swinging about in the wind. 

All true Highlanders must lament, that a Fraser, 
one of the clan, incurred the disgrace of betraying 



CAWDOR CASTLE. 241 

his chief, who was traced to a large tree on his own 
property, and yielded himself up, saying, " It is not 
your cleverness that has caught me now, but four- 
score and foui'." 

When death became inevitable he encountered 
it with extraordinary hardihood ; and the fall of a 
scaffold ha\-ing killed several spectators, at the veiy 
moment of his execution, he turned round, saying, 
" Aye ! the mair mischief the better sport !" 

The ancestors at Cawdor Castle evidently did not 
sit to the best artists. They seem to have worn 
armour and full-bottomed wigs like other people, 
and though we could not quite distinguish the ladies 
from the gentlemen, they all have the usual allow- 
ance of eyes and noses, yet, in respect to their beau- 
ty, least said is perhaps soonest mended, but some 
of them were most ineffable looking. In ancient 
times, heiresses were obliged occasionally to make 
very unexpected journeys ; and here Muriella Cal- 
der, who inherited Calder, now Cawdor Castle, was 
carried off in 1510, without being much consulted 
on the subject, by the Campbells, and married to the 
Earl of Argyle's second son. His coat-of-arms and 
initials are placed over the entrance, and magnifi- 
cently emblazoned also on a curious antique chimney- 
piece. A more recent transaction of this kind did 
not end quite so well. A brother of the first Duke 
of Argyll carried off an English heiress, Miss Whar- 
21* 



242 KILRAVOCK. 

ton, but the marriage was immediately dissolved. 
The culprit himself escaped any severer penalty, but 
Sir John Johnston, who had assisted in the frolic, 
was hanged. 

One ancestor, wearing a Nova Scotia ribbon, 
whose portrait was introduced to us, seems to have 
been a perfect Samson. An iron gate is shown, 
with bars fit for Newgate, which tradition assures 
us, upon its veracity, that this gentleman carried on 
his back fifteen miles ! The worthy housekeeper 
believes with all her might, as in duty bound, but I 
should like to have seen it done. 

One room here is hung entirely round with ta- 
pestry about two hundred years old, said to be the 
work of Lady Henrietta Stewart's own individual 
needle, but she could as easily have carried the iron 
gate, as manufactured all we saw, in which she was 
of course assisted by a phalanx of maids. The wall 
behind these hangings is not even plastered, but this 
fine old tapestry grates against a rough stone wall, 
being hung up, as children wear their pinafores, to 
conceal defects ; and now, having explored as care- 
fully, from the kitchen to the sky -lights, as if the 
house were to be let furnished, " seen Tuesdays, 
Thursdays, and Saturdays," we took leave of our 
worthy old cicerone with the customary ceremony, 
as housekeepers must all have their hands crossed 
with silver or gold, like gypsies, which I would 



KILRAVOCK. 243 

much rather do to hear stories of the past, than 
prophecies of the future. 

On our way home we drove through the charm- 
ing grounds of Kihavock, a place which has been 
possessed these 700 years by a succession, from fa- 
ther to son, of upwards of twenty proprietors, who, 
with one exception, were all named " Hugh Rose," 
or, according to the ancient spelling, Roos, which 
sounds more distinguished than the mere cottage 
designation of a short-lived flower. At Kilravock 
the lawn is cut into beds of brilliant shrubs, en- 
closed by picturesque palings of rough stakes, 
interspereed with creepers, while some of the plants 
are growing in baskets raised five feet from the 
ground, for the benefit of loungers too lazy to stoop 
when they pick a nosegay. 

We wished to examine the old square tower of 
Kilravock, which seems cast in the same mould as 
that of Cawdor Castle, and belonged to a family of 
still greater importance, who were Barons; for 
though Shakspeare has magnified the importance of 
the Thane of Cawdor, and gives the pas to Thanes, 
that is quite a mistake in respect both to the impor- 
tance and the precedency of the title. When we 
requested admittance to an old hall hung with an- 
cient armour, the powdered footman looked as much 
astonished and perplexed, as if we had asked to see 
a residence in Portman Square or St. James' Street, 



244 KILRAVOCK. 

and protested there was actually nothing to see. 
Though the tower looked as high, grand, and dis- 
mal as that in Blue-Beard's Castle, from which 
" Anne, sister Anne," could see nobody coming, yet, 
upon his credible testimony, we unwillingly gave 
up the point, and threw Kilravock to the winds, 
" but, if the winds won't have it, to the waves," 
rather grudging the time and trouble wasted on a 
vain attempt. I should like to occupy my moments 
as conscientiously as the celebrated Wesley, who 
never allowed himself to pass a minute unemployed, 
and when detained once at a door for ten minutes, 
as we were at Kilravock, was heard to exclaim, in 
a tone of regret, "I have lost ten minutes for 
ever !" 

Moment by moment, years are past, 
And one ere long will be our last. 



STRATHGLASS. 



As I walk'd by m)'self, 
I talk'd to myself, 

And thus myself said to me. 

My dear Cousin, — If you value us, as Desdemona 
(lid her lover, by the dangers we have passed, I flat- 
ter myself we shall increase in your estimation daily 
during our Highland adventures. At all events, 
neither you nor I, while we both live, can ever be 
in the disconsolate state of a lady, who once com- 
plained she was so little cared for in the world, that 
if it were the fashion to burn her, she had scarcely 
a friend on earth who could refrain from throwing 
in a faggot! 

This morning we made a flight through the 
birch-clad glen of Strathglass to take a glimpse of 
Erchless Castle, belonging to the descendants of 
that old chief who said there were but three persons 
in the world entitled to be called " The," — the King, 
the Pope, and the Chisholm. 

This place is beauty personified, and you would 
fall in love with it at first sight. The Castle is a 
venerable white-washed old tower, so entirely sur- 
rounded by a wreath of hills, that the glen seems 
scooped out on pui-pose to hold the house and park. 



246 STRATHGLASS. 

Here all was verdant and bright, like the happy 
valley of Rasselas, and you might have imagined 
for a moment that nothing but joy and peace could 
be there ; yet our minds w^ere filled with the sad 
remembrance, how recently the young, talented, and 
singularly amiable proprietor had sunk into the grave, 
deeply and deservedly lamented by his family, his 
tenantry, and the county he represented. 

We proceeded, with respectful sympathy, to visit 
a romantic spot in which the Chisholm desired to be 
buried, and to which his remains were conducted by 
so great a concourse of friends and clansmen, that 
the procession, in close phalanx, covered two miles 
along the highroad. The grave is placed on the 
summit of a high conical hill, like a Druid's cairn, 
surrounded by massy old fir-trees; and one fresh 
young larch stands conspicuously in advance, which 
he planted himself, and beside which, in the near 
prospect of death, he frequently sat for hours, read- 
ing those promises of eternity which reconciled him 
to the early termination of his fleeting moments on 
earth. 

" That life is long, which answers life's great end." 
A paling of rough stakes encloses the sacred spot 
where he is laid, a large green turf, like an emerald, 
covers the tomb, and a small rustic seat, the only 
ornament of the place, stands at the foot of the 
grave. 



STRATHGLASS. 247 

Besides building many farm-houses and cottages, 
the Chisholm raised a church on the estate, entirely 
at his own expense; and our guide informed us, 
that the editor of the Inverness Herald frequently 
preached there, and gave an excellent sermon, 
though I should fancy it must have been difficult 
for him to resist an occasional touch on politics, and 
substituting a leading article for one head of his 
discourse. Lord Lovat built an opposition Roman 
Catholic Chapel on the other side of Strathglass ; 
and, in considering the zeal of both parties, and the 
rapid progress of Popery in this neighbomhood, I 
could not but think how soon our own Protestant 
countrymen may be circumstanced like those of 
former days in the valleys of Switzerland. A tone 
of false " liberality" is now in fashion respecting re- 
ligious faith and doctrine, but the time may not be 
distant, when every true Christian must cling to his 
creed with tenacious firmness, remembering that our 
Saviour's own admonition was, to be " first pure, 
then peaceable;" and knowing that, since a be- 
liever can alter no single declaration of the gospel, 
he can exercise no liberality of his own, but must 
seek the guidance of the Holy Spirit to interpret 
every text aright, and then faithfully profess what 
he has been taught, " Not shunning to declare the 
whole counsel of God," and not, like Pilate, asking 
" what is truth ?" without waiting for any answer. 



248 STRATHGLASS. 

We were told that the Roman Catholic priests, 
'who wish pater-nosters, ave'Marias, crossings, 
sprinklings, and genuflexions to supply the place of 
truth, holiness, and sincerity, openly rejoiced at the 
removal of a Protestant so exemplary and influen- 
tial as the Chisholm, who had exhibited a degree of 
character and energy at an early age, which caused 
him to be already regarded with a reverence gen- 
erally reserved for the old. During our visit to In- 
verness, it was still remembered in the Caledonian 
Hotel, that when he resided for several months 
there, his own servants, and nearly the whole house- 
hold, were assembled in his room every morning 
and evening to prayers, when many of the visiters 
asked leave to attend, and thought it a privilege to 
hear the words of faith and hope from one who al- 
ready knew how soon his faith w^ould be swallowed 
up in sight, and his hope in enjoyment. 

I cannot but think that the time is happily now 
in a great degree passed, when the M^orld's loud 
laugh, its scorn, and its hatred, would be excited, by 
a character living in a nation of professing Chris- 
tians like ours, and truly raised above the sorrows, 
temptations, and vanities of this fleeting scene. 
When Dr. Blair preached his celebrated sermon, 
declaring that if perfect virtue were exhibited on 
earth, all men would fall down and worship it, his 
colleague Dr. Walker replied to him next Sunday 



STRATHGLASS. 249 

from the pulpit, that such a character had once ap- 
peared in the world, and only once, not to be wor- 
shipped and admired, but to be crucified and slain. 
This country is, however, now brought nominally un- 
der the yoke of Christ. Almost every individual ac- 
knowledges our Di\dne Redeemer as the Master he 
ought to serve, — those who live in the neglect of 
their Bibles have a painful consciousness of guilt and 
danger; and while there is no question in society as 
to the authority of Holy Scripture, the only differ- 
ence of opinion relates to the manner and degree of 
obedience. The society in which we live is formed 
not of unbehevers, such as those among whom 
Christ personally descended, to set aside their old 
tenets, and to implant a new and better dispensa- 
tion, but of his ostensible adherents, varying in 
character, faithful or lukewarm, like the disciples 
in Ephesus, Smyrna, and all the seven churches 
of Asia, but still ranged under one banner, and 
professing one allegiance. Those who study hfe 
among men, rather than among books, must be 
aware, that, in the present day, fashion, if not feel- 
ing, is all in favour of external devotion. God 
alone knoweth the heart; but even among those 
most seeking the world's applause, it must be obvi- 
ous that no individual now ranks higher in the es- 
teem, or rather in the reverence of cultivated society, 
than a consistent, strict, and judicious Christian. 
22 



250 STRATHGLASS. 

Religion is not answerable for the weaknesses, de- 
fects, and follies of her votaries, many of whom 
bring discredit on her cause by blemishes in their 
own natm-al disposition and conduct, which a more 
enlightened piety would teach them to correct. 
The invisible strings of an instrument, when rightly 
tuned, produce the harmony which delights us; 
and where the inward and spiritual grace is testified 
by a conduct and conversation really becoming the 
gospel, a majority in our own country will bear tes- 
timony to its excellence and beauty. Religion has 
been said to consist in " imitating Him whom we 
adore," and it may be lamented how harsh and de- 
fective the imitation too often is, exhibiting as 
much disparity in style and success, as the painters 
who have attempted to represent our Divine Sa- 
viour's personal appearance when on earth, some 
being hard, or exaggerated, while others have the 
grace, dignity, and attractiveness which Raphael 
has communicated to his portraits. Some Christians 
I have known, whose devotions in the closet were 
followed by such conduct as could stand the strictest 
of all scrutiny — that of their own domestic circle — 
who, pursuing the even tenor of their way in sim- 
plicity and godly sincerity, persevered in a total non- 
conformity to customs and habits irreconcilable with 
their high calling, and were yet so amiable at home, 
so deeply fervent in prayer for others, and so con- 



STKATHGLASS. 251 

ciliatory to all without exception, that those even 
least ready to follow their example could not with- 
hold their respect. A good soldier of Jesus Christ 
may inevitably be associated with others careless 
and criminal in their neglect of sacred duties, who 
will seek to beguile him from his steadfastness, but, 
once proved to be firm in obeying the Master whom 
they all profess to serve, none of that hatred and 
ridicule are excited which formerly beset the foot- 
steps of all who pursued the narrow path of Chris- 
tian duty, but rather a latent belief arises, that the 
man of God has chosen the better part, and a desire 
is felt at some distant period to do likewise. If 
Christians are reproached, they should take care 
that it be only for something in which they really 
do resemble Christ, and if they are persecuted, that 
it is indeed for " righteousness' sake;" but too often 
when professing to follow a very high standard, 
they cast a slur upon religion by failing most lamen- 
tably in the minor morals of their own peculiar sta- 
tion, and neglect to exhibit the mere shadow of 
goodness, because gifted with the substance. I 
have sometimes been astonished to perceive in those 
who intended to be followers of our blessed Saviour's 
example, a most unsuitable want of consideration 
for the feelings of others, and of attention to trifling 
duties, such as cheerful contentment under every cir- 
cumstance, personal neatness, moderation in eating, 



252 STRATHGLASS. 

careful expenditure of time, charitable blindness to 
the faults of others, and pity for the sorrows of their 
neighbours, which rendered them obvious to the 
criticisms of those who neglect many higher objects, 
but to whom those external amiabilities, which no 
one should neglect, are almost an entire code of 
duty. We might sometimes smile, were it not so 
melancholy, to see how ingeniously religion can be 
made a cloak to conceal from people themselves 
that they are influenced by evil feelings, which, in 
their naked reality, would be disowned and abhorred. 
If a Christian whose nature tends to envy, sees his 
neighbour's family suffering under some great cala- 
mity, how apt is he to remark, "Ah ! they have had 
a long course of prosperity, and needed something 
of this kind to admonish them !" A Christian be- 
coming indolent and careless about the essential 
doctrines of religion, professes " liberality," and 
scarcely seems as if he preferred one church to an- 
other ; those of an opposite class, having formed a 
code of opinions for themselves, think they are per- 
secuted by all who merely differ from them, and 
consider every man obstinately blind, and deservedly 
condemned, who does not agree to their views in 
every particular. Christians not formed for society, 
profess to think no one of more sociable habits can 
be genuinely pious, and retire to solitude in fancied 
security, forgetful how many are hermits by nature 



ERCHLESS CASTLE. 253 

and inclination, with no higher motive than natural 
taste, and they thus lose that discipline of the mind 
and heart which men are placed in contact with 
others on purpose to receive ; and a Christian au- 
thor, publishing some heavy volume which obtains 
little circulation, nourishes his vanity, by telling 
himself how few are capable of appreciating him, — 
that more popular works become so by conforming 
in a considerable degree to general opinions, — and 
that "the world will love its own." When we con- 
template what Christians have occasionally been, 
and what they ought awlays to be, it is lamentable 
that those blessed with the peculiar gifts of Chris- 
tian character should neglect its decorations, — that 
the fruit and flowers should seem deficient when 
the root and branches are sound, — that the diamond, 
with all its intrinsic worth, fails to shine before men 
who would be ready to recognise and value it, but 
for the want of exterior polish. 

Our guide through the grounds of Erchless Casi 
tie infoiTtned me that, in a thatched hut nearly half 
a mile distant, lived a very aged and infirm Roman 
Catholic priest, who has made a practice during 
several years past of being wheeled in an arm 
chair to the road side, where he used to read per^ 
petually, but his' eye-sight being now impaired, he 
lives upon the gossip and small talk of the high-, 
way, and watches eagerly for any chance passen-, 
22* 



254 ERCHLESS CASTLE. 

gers to converse with, though, living, as he does, 
half-way up a glen which leads to nothing, he must 
often experience the meaning of " hope deferred." 
Nothing comes amiss to old " Father Philip " in the 
■way of news, either public or private, and our cice- 
rone departed, strongly recommending us to visit 
this eccentric character, " who hears all that hap- 
pens from Spey to the Orkneys." He seemed un- 
questionably one of the natural curiosities in this 
district, therefore we resolved to hold a conference 
at his levee, which turned out marvellously enter- 
taining. You never saw so much dignity maintained 
on means apparently so inadequate, for, though the 
dress of Father Philip be of the poorest description, 
and his whole person is swollen with dropsy, yet 
the Pope himself need scarcely have been ashamed 
to see his representative. When we approached, 
his whole countenance lighted up with pleasure at 
catching a fresh haul of visiters ; he bowed, shook 
hands, and attempted to offer me his easy chair, but 
failed in his endeavour to rise, while I entreated him 
to desist, and greatly preferred one of the large 
stones, several of which are placed in a circle 
around him for visiters. He began the interview 
by inquiring whether we preferred whiskey or milk 
for our refreshment, and after the produce of his 
dairy had been duly produced, he asked, in a cour- 
teous tone, a perfect torrent of questions about every 



BEAULY. 255 

tiling and every body, especially with a view to find 

out who we were, which A , to the best of his 

ability, explained. 

Father Philip has long, to use our Scottish 
phraseology, " enjoyed" very bad health, and is, 
moreover, quite superannuated. I often wish a re- 
tiring pension were provided for aged clergymen of 
our persuasion, as well as for half-pay officers, though 
there would be many perhaps as unwilling to relax 
in their pastoral labours as the venerable Arnold, 
who replied, when his friends represented that his 
years and infirmities required more rest, " No ! I shall 
soon have all eternity to rest in !" 

Proceeding from Erchless Castle towards Beau- 
ly, through the most charming glen scenery in the 
world, we lamented over several thousand magnifi- 
cent birch trees already laid prostrate for raihoads, 
and two thousand more marked for a similar fate, 
and weeping in anticipation of their fall. I am sm-e 
we acted as chief mourners on the occasion. 

About three miles from Beauly, we passed an 
extremely romantic cottage, with an extremely ro- 
mantic history. It was built on a small island five 
years ago, by the descendant of Simon Lord Lovat, 
for the alleged descendants of Prince Charles, two 
very accomphshed gentlemen, who have never dis- 
tinctly stated their claim, but are much esteemed in 
the neighbourhood, and received at some houses 



256 BEAULY. 

with almost royal honours. We saw them for a 
moment near their own gate, both accoutred in 
splendid Highland costume, precisely copied from 
portraits of " The Young Chevalier," with the white 
cockade mounted on their bonnets, their plaids flying, 
and feathers waving in the breeze, and certainly 
the resemblance is striking, but farther than this the 
deponent saith not. The family of Lovat, unable 
to bestow the whole island of Great Britain, accord- 
ing to their inclinations, have succeeded ar least in 
providing an island situated in " The Dream," where 
any one they please may be privileged to exclaim, 

" I am monarch of all I survey, 
My right there is none to dispute." 

The river dashes vehemently round this charm- 
ing green isle, which rises abruptly out of the wa- 
ter, crowned with trees, and surrounded by curious 
pyramids of rock, like conglomerated gravel, wash- 
ed by the tumultuous stream into a hundred fantas- 
tic shapes, resembling turrets, steeples, castles, and 
even trees of stone. The cottage looks as if its 
walls had been covered with a border plaid, as the 
dark grey stones are checked with stripes of white 
cement — a ferry-boat was moored on one side of the 
island, and a rustic bridge, extremely unsafe looking, 
hung on the other, while the whole scene was hem- 
med in by a circle of such magnificent wooded hills 
as might make the fortune of any ordinary place. 



BEAULY. 257 

The falls of Beauly, or more properly Beaulieu, are 
like a cascade of silver churned into foam, and fret- 
ted into appearing as white as a sheet, among the 
iron-looking rocks. The best view is from a gar- 
den near the road, belonging to the parish clergy- 
man ; but if his " vineyard" be no better cared for 
than his garden, I should be sorry for the parishion- 
ers. This ought to be one of the loveliest spots 
upon earth, but is now such a mere bear-garden of 
weeds, I felt much inclined to take up a hoe myself. 

We admired Lord Lo vat's beautiful park and 
grounds, though rather at a loss to guess why his cot- 
tage-looking house was ever dignified with the name 
of Beaufort Castle, not being more like our idea of 
a castle than a pistol is to a cannon. Near this, 
1200 acres of forest have been planted in two years, 
w^hich compensates in some degree for thousands 
having been wrenched out of the Drhuim at one 
fell swoop. 

I would subscribe something to get the ancient 
ruin of Beauly Priory cleaned out and made tidy, 
for you never witnessed a more disorderly scene of 
desolation. Probably every grain of dust in this 
old cemetery once formed part of a human frame, 
but now, open stone coffins, human bones, long spi- 
ry grass, nettles and tomb-stones, are all miscella- 
neously heaped together, and when I saw the orna- 
mented tablets which had formerly been meant to 
express the dignity- and worth of those who lay 



258 BEAULY. 

scattered around, I could not but think of the tears 
that must have fallen when those graves were closed, 
and of the many hopes and fears, and joys and sor- 
rows like our own, which once filled the heads and 
hearts of the silent, neglected dead, sleeping uncon- 
sciously at our feet; but how transient is the honour 
given by man, even when carved on stone ! We 
waste much sympathy on the departed in such a 
scene, for to them the body is of no more importance 
than the mantle of Elijah after he ascended to 
heaven; but yet for our own sakes, if men wish 
hereafter to be laid at rest in decency and peace, 
they should respect the sanctuary of others, even 
though their name and kindred be forgotten, for 
there is not an emotion or an affection can live in 
the heart of any living man, that the dead in their 
time have not also shared. 

Nothing proves how little the beauties of Scot- 
land are explored more obviously than the entire 
want of horses, accommodation, or comfort of any 
kind in a village like Beauly, the great thorough- 
fare to much of our finest scenery. The inn is 
little better than an ale-house, with no " entertain- 
ment" that we could see, fit for either man or horse. 
Swarms of pedestrians were hastening along the high 
road, to attend a Thursday sermon before the Sacra- 
ment in some distant parish, all so gayly dressed, that 
we conjectured they must be going to a wedding; 
and the crowds which usually congregate on such 



KILLICHRIST CHURCH. 259 

occasions have become so serious an inconvenience 
to the clergy, that they have decided in many dis- 
tricts that this ordinance shall be held everywhere 
on the same day, to prevent strangers from trans- 
forming the most sacred of all earthly duties into a 
scene of mere lounging and gossip. In the High- 
lands many servants make a stipulation, when en- 
gaged, that they shall be allowed, in every neigh- 
bouring parish, regularly to attend "The Preach- 
ings," and the country milliners all hasten down 
wdth patterns of their newest bonnets and caps for 
that occasion. 

Three miles from Beauly we entered the ruins 
of Killichrist Church, where, on accoimt of family 
feuds, a whole congregation of the clan Mackenzie 
was burned alive by the Macdonells of Glengarry, 
during which a piper paraded round the church, 
performing an extemporary tune, still used as Glen- 
garry's pibroch. Men, women, and children were 
thrust back with spearS when they attempted to 
escape from the flames ; and one young woman, 
who had claimed protection and gained her liberty 
on account of being a Macdonell, was thrown back 
into the general conflagration, when it was dis- 
covered that she was married to a Mackenzie. 
Many bones of these miserable victims are still visi- 
ble, whitening in the sun, sad memorials of this 
wholesale massacre ; yet the woman who lived close 
beside this church, and accompanied us round the 



260 BRAHAN CASTLE. 

bare and blackened walls, seemed to know little, 
and to care still less, about so old a story. If we 
had inquired about the smoking of a bee-hive, she 
could scarcely have expressed more indifference, but 
it is curious, that the greater the number of sufferers 
on any occasion, the smaller is the sympathy exci- 
ted by their fate. 

Tourists fancy they have seen all the beauties of 
Scotland after reaching Inverness ; but there never 
was a greater mistake, as the picture-gallery of 
landscapes becomes more romantic every mile you 
advance. The whole road by Beauly to Dingwall 
presents a succession of charming palaces and mag- 
nificent scenery. Brahan Castle belonged to a real 
aboriginal chieftain, and is worthy of the ancient 
Seaforth dynasty, being a massy old edifice of hand- 
some exterior, though united to a better-half of very 
disproportioned age and unsuitable appearance, — 
the one being venerable with declining years, the 
other very plain and exceedingly juvenile. In a 
landscape, the rarest of all ornaments are handsome 
well-grown oaks, such as we admired here in rich 
profusion, not mere brushwood, but positive timber, 
fit to build a seventy-four, and such as Richmond 
Park might be proud of. It extends over two or 
three miles of park, the ground rising in charming 
terraces from the river Connan to the summit of the 
crested hills, which form a magnificent climax. 

Here, in full Highland garb, we saw a fine spir- 



BRAHAN CASTLE. 261 

ited portrait by Raeburn, of the late Lord Seaforth, 
the last chief of that ancient line. A Ross-shire 
gentleman repeated to me the prophecy of Thomas 
the Rhymer concerning that family, known in the 
comitry a centuiy before its melancholy fulfilment, 
and besides other well-known domestic circum- 
stances, the premature death of Lord Seaforth's two 
very talented and accomplished sons was foretold, 
and that " a dark lady from the east should come to 
inherit this estate." A most dismal portrait was 
shown us, representing the w^ife of the fugitive Lord 
Seaforth, who looks as if she had never known a 
cheerful moment, and as if the sun itself had never 
shone upon her. Her chess is black, the frame is 
black, and I almost wondered how she happened to 
sit in so melancholy a mood at all. The whole 
room is enlivened by a showily-dressed likeness of 
George the Third, whose portraits are generally in 
a blaze of white, ermine fur, powdered hair, his foot 
on a footstool, and his profile as distinctly marked 
as on the coinage. Nothing is so unbecoming as a 
portrait in profile, it looks so hard and sharp. 

Cardinal Richelieu's picture and the Duchess of 
Cleveland's, form an amiable pair in the library, and 
she is accompanied by a little fashionable-looking 
dog. Even in these old times, the canine madness 
prevailed of idolizing dogs, though not perhaps car- 
ried to the excess we now see, when some pet-dogs 

in London have printed visiting cards, which they 
23 



262 BRAHAN CASTLE. 

leave along with those of the lady who belongs to 
them. A distinguished authoress lately, of perfectly 
sane mind, and in possession of all her senses, wrote 
a letter to her Blenheim spaniel, with advice about 
his diet and conduct during their temporai-y separa- 
tion, and another equally celebrated writer, being 
in a house which was suddenly in danger of falling, 
left her friends to take care of themselves, but 
snatched up her dog and her manuscripts to hurry 
them out of danger. When Eneas carried his father 
out of Troy, he was not probably a dog-fancier. 

Travellers have expressed their surprise at find- 
ing so few great public libraries in this coimtry, 
compared with the continent ; but in private houses 
they would be equally astonished at their nmnber 
and magnificence. The collection of books is nearly 
as good a test of family antiquity as the collection 
of portraits, while the one may be supposed fitly to 
represent the mind, as the other does the external 
aspect of departed generations. Here we found the 
library a most comfortable, studious-looking room, 
lined with sober mahogany book-cases, which were 
filled with abundance of plainly dressed domestic 
looking books, written by the good old standard 
authors, whom nobody ever thinks of reading now^ 
As Swift remarked, men treat great authors now, 
as vulgar people treat the nobility, talking famil- 
iarly of those whose titles only they have learned 
by heart. Here, as in all Highland castles, the 



BRAHAN CASTLE. 263 

rooms were decorated with so many stags' heads, 
that they might have peopled a whole forest, but I 
was sorry that not a single haunch remained on the 
table. 

The present proprietor of Brahan Castle being 
in office abroad, the house and grounds are let, 
which is less injurious to the place and neighbour- 
hood, than if it had remained untenanted like many 
of the finest places in Ross-shire, which had the look 
of neglected desolation so soon acquired by resi- 
dences without residents. 

The magnificent scale on which country hospi- 
talities must now be maintained by those who wish 
to receive their friends at all, soon exhausts any pri- 
vate fortune, and country gentlemen, who would 
frequently rather cease to be hospitable at all, than 
become so merely in moderation, retire from useful- 
ness at home to the insignificance and incognito of 
continental life, rather than exercise judicious re- 
trenchments in the neighbourhood where they are 
subject to observation. As a sensible old proverb 
remarks, " the eyes of other people are the eyes 
which ruin us," and few persons regret any mode- 
rate privation, if no one else be aware of the neces- 
sity, or criticise the details. Instead of exclaiming, 
like Sir Peter Teazle, however, " defend me from 
my friends," I would rather say, " defend rae from 
the servants of my friends," for they require a de- 
gree of comfort and luxury where their mastere 



264 BRAHAN CASTLE. 

visit, such as a gentleman in former days would have 
been charmed to enjoy. In several Highland 
houses, the second table declines to dine on red- 
deer-venison, muirfowl, salmon, salt meat, or any 
thing cold, and a remonstrance was made at one 
place, that there had been roast lamb three days 
running, which could not be tolerated. A noble 
Lord in Perthshire, who allowed no second table for 
his establishment, being informed that the valet be- 
longing to one of his visiters, had entered a protest 
against dining with the livery servants, sent for him 
during his own dinner, and said, pointing to a va- 
cant seat next to the man's own master, " I allow 
only two tables in my house, therefore, if you think 
this more suitable to your station than the other, 
pray be seated !" The man shrunk off quite 
abashed, and no more was heard of his difficulties 
or objections ; but servants in general think it ne- 
cessary to support their master's dignity, by boasting 
of the indulgences which they are allowed at home, 
and are perhaps allowed to invent new perquisites 
for themselves, and to claim some they never before 
enjoyed, for we find much truth in the old saying, 
that " the strictest economists are always most liberal 
of their neighbour's goods, — and a miser is the most 
jovial of all companions at a friend's table." A 
" good old country gentleman," who would gladly 
have been sociable with his acquaintances, at length 
discovers, after struggling with the inconvenience of 



BRAHAN CASTLE. 265 

all these troubles for a few years, that the same 
gratitude, and less annoyance, are given to those who 
keep a hotel, which would be as agreeable, and less 
expensive. A Scotch innkeeper came once in great 
perplexity to a noble Duke, saying, his Grace's ser- 
vants had called for claret, but he supposed, of 
course, without permission, to which the Duke re- 
plied, " If the fellows are impudent enough to ask 
for it, I suppose they must have some !" When an 
English Baronet asked his valet lately, how a pipe 
of fine old port was holding out, he replied, " In- 
deed, Sir ! we have been rather hard upon it lately !" 
and it was the modest request of a butler to his 
master once, that he might be allowed " more 
wages, less work, and the key of the wine cellar !" 
Upper servants think it beneath their dignity to be 
contented anywhere, or anyhow, while those who 
wish to attain pre-eminence among their cotempo- 
raries must excel in the science of fault finding, and 
be deeply versed in the mystery of perquisites and 
precedencies. No proprietor, unless he has kept 
open house in the country, can guess half the an- 
noyance these trifles connected with " the plague of 
servants" occasion, nor how much this want of pro- 
per discipline is the reason why half the castles and 
cottages in Scotland are "to be let furnished or 
unfurnished." 

Wishing you and all the world a good night. 
Yours, &c. 

23* 



STRATHPEFFER. 



Oh! there is sweetness in the mountain air, 
And life, that bloated ease may never hope to share. 

Byron. 

My dear Cousin, — A new style of MTiting Eng- 
lish is in vogue at present, in which I have a soar- 
ing ambition to excel, if I can only arrange a neat 
mosaic of different languages, as ingeniously as 
some recent authors, who express themselves in this 
way, " Time passes a merveille, and I rose to-day 
au point du jour, to enjoy a promenade en voiture, 
and afterwards a pied, wdth our cicerone, where the 
beau monde assemble, and s'ennuyer en cherchant de 
s'amuser. Our cuisine Francaise is superintended 
by a chey, whose savoir is incomparable; and at 
dinner we had cotelettes-a-la minute dressed a ravir, 
entremets, — and for the rest, see M. Ude, chapter 
ten, to be read straight through. Do you remember 
the affected Englishman, who talked once of " Li 
maniere de sod tc," and asked how we express that 
in this country, when you replied, " we generally 
say, " Pusage du monde ! " 

The French insist there are three thino^s we 

o 

ought to avoid at the risk of our lives, — a family 
dinner — an amateur concert — and home-made wine ; 
but they might have added, above all, a watering- 



STRATHPEFFER. 267 

place out of season. Here we are at Strathpeffer, 
the Harrogate of Scotland, where people expect 
their health to be improved by drinking themselves 
into a perfect dropsy with nauseous mineral waters. 
There is a fashion in physic quite as much as in 
bonnets ; and Dr. Granville, with his fifty German 
Spas, has thrown this place rather into the shade, 
though some wanderers yet continue to stray here 
in search of health, gayety, or retirement, as the 
case may be. The number of invalids arrived here 
not being yet sufficient to constitute an ordinary, 
we had dinner in our own room, so very indifferent, 
that it ought to have been hissed off the stage, — a 
leg of lamb that might have grown into mutton 
since the time it was killed, and a miserable chicken, 
which had been eAddently starved to death. 

Our landlady had somewhat the manner of a 
retired Duchess at first, but at length relaxed from 
her dignity, and paid me a long visit, with a fine 
lively baby in her arms of nine months old, who 
was perfectly blind. It was affecting to see the 
poor little thing so unconscious of a calamity which 
must hereafter embitter his whole earthly existence ; 
but, fortunately for himself, he is born in a station 
which will oblige him to make great exertions for 
his subsistence, — as a life without motive, occupa- 
tion, or sight, would indeed be one of hopeless en- 
durance. The greatest alleviation such a case can 
admit, is to be found in such employments as are 



268 STRATHPEFFER. 

taught in the BUnd Asylums, where sufferers are 
consoled and cheered by the sympathy of others as 
unhappily circumstanced. It is a curious source 
from which to derive comfort, that of knowing oth- 
ers are as ill off" as ourselves ; but if I had the tooth- 
ache, I should wish to be in a room full of people 
with the toothache also ! At the Blind Asylum in 
Edinburgh you may see any day a very remarkable 
man, who lost his sight at four years old, and who 
knows the Bible by heart so perfectly, that not only 
can he repeat without hesitation any chapter or 
verse he may be asked for, but he can likevdse 
quote parallel passages in Scripture, and combine 
the various texts which teach similar doctrines. If 
I were obliged to give up the blessing of sight, and 
could choose what gift to receive in exchange, it 
would undoubtedly be my first wish to possess so 
enlightened a knowledge of the Holy Scripture as 
that of John Maclaren. 

It was most melancholy and depressing to ob- 
serve the crowds of poor, decrepit, miserable objects 
who assemble at StrathpefTer, — and when I saw 
them so utterly helpless and wretched, we were re- 
minded of the pool at Bethesda, and of the joy that 
must have been felt there at the moving of the 
waters, though but one sufferer was to be cured. 
Some time ago subscriptions were levied to raise 
a hospital for invalids who came here without the 
means of living, but unfortunately the collectors 



STRATHPEFFER. 269 

were too sanguine, expecting ten times more than 
they received ; so, after expending more than their 
funds on raising the mere empty shell of a large 
edifice, no endowment remained for furnishing it, or 
supporting the inmates ; therefore the building stands 
bare, gaunt, and empty, like too many of our public 
and private structures, which become mere cumber- 
ers of the ground, because men still neglect the 
advice of Scriptui'e, to " count the cost" before 
beginning to build. 

In looking at the crowd of indigent suffering peo- 
ple round the well, how inevitably must that question 
occur to the minds of those blessed with health and 
competence, " who maketh thee to differ ?" and 
why have the lines fallen imto us in such pleasant 
places? Those who neglect to alleviate the suf- 
ferings of others, or who encourage one discontented 
thought in such circumstances, would indeed deserve 
to forfeit all, and incur the just indignation of that 
Great and Good Being, who tries some with adver- 
sity and others with prosperity, expecting implicit 
resignation from the one, and cheerful gratitude 
from the other, but " all whose ways are mercy and 
truth." While thankfully receiving the dispensa- 
tions of good or of apparent evil which fall to our 
share in the general distribution, we should endea- 
vour, if it be possible, calmly to welcome eveiy 
vicissitude, under the very soothing conviction, that 
nothing comes by chance, but all is the appointed 



270 couL. 

means by which, if rightly used, we shall be pre- 
pared to " dwell in the House of the Lord for ever." 

When strolling along the highroad, admiring 
Ben Weavis, " the mountain of storms," we were 
overtaken by a strange-looking beggar, dressed in a 
sort of tattered magnificence, with a black satin 
cloak, the hood of which was drawn over her soiled 
and crumpled cap. She had pursued us at full 
speed for nearly a mile, and carried a large well- 
grown baby in her arms. At first I thought, from 
her vehement unintelligible articulation, that she 
spoke in Gaelic, but on stopping to listen, and in- 
quiring afterwards, we discovered that she was the 
miserable remains of a fine French abigail, wander- 
ing through this remote district in search of charity, 
without being able to speak one word of English. 
It was quite a case, as your sentimental friend would 
say, " for sixpence and tears." These changes of 
fortune among the spoiled sei'vants in great families 
are but too frequent, and the ultimate fate of those 
who are capriciously indulging in wanton extrava- 
gance, very commonly is to die in a hospital, and 
to be buried by the parish. 

Towards evening, we found ourselves near Coul, 
about two miles from Strathpeffer, and having un- 
derstood that the place is at present to be let, we 
resolved to inspect the house and grounds, though 
without much intention of becoming tenants. I was 
not allowed, however, to admire anything beyond a 



CASTLE LEOD. 271 

black palisade, bristling all round the park like a 
porcupine, and covered with pitch and tar. You 
shall now hear the true meaning of " a Coul recep- 
tion." An old woman appeared at the lodge, very 
like one of the witches in Macbeth, but by no means 
inclined to " open locks whoever knocks." See- 
ing we wished to enter, she made me a long oration 
through the bars of her gate, in Gaelic, and having 
" possession of the house," she declaimed with great 
animation, suiting the action to the word as she 
shook her head, and did not open the black dismal- 
looking gate. I made a speech in reply, of persua- 
sive eloquence, but the noes had it, and her daughter 
finished the discussion, by acting as interpreter, and 
" rising to explain," that the proprietor had sent 
orders from abroad, " if his most intimate friend ap- 
plied for admission, to refuse it." This was unan- 
swerable, so leaving the place to " blush unseen," 
we proceeded to enjoy a stroll in the beautiful park 
of Castle Leod, which belonged to the Earls of Cro- 
marty, and has descended by inheritance to the 
present owner, Mrs. Hay Mackenzie. We passed 
under the shadow of a splendid Spanish chesnut, the 
stem as straight as a pillar, measuring eighteen feet 
circumference, at five feet from the ground. It has 
luckily fallen into good hands, as we saw no cutting 
or maiming of forests here, and there is quite an ex- 
hibition of trees in every variety, which might gain 
a prize at any show. 



272 CASTLE LEOD. 

The very aged house is built on the model of 
every old Scottish castle, with the turrets and pinna- 
cles looking like vinegar cruets, and over the door of 
entrance are the family arms emblazoned on stone. 
This place has been these many seasons the annual 
resort of sportsmen, to whom it is let " unfurnished;" 
but I was amused to hear that some years ago, a 
nobleman of very large fortune took the almost 
empty house, and finding in it a couple of bedsteads 
and some wooden chairs more than had been bar- 
gained for, he bravely resolved to rough it for the 
season, without adding another article of furnitm'e. 
It is amusing to see how those who are born and 
bred in luxury delight occasionally to throw it off, 
while the whole race of nouveaux riches, abigails, 
and valets, live in perpetual anxiety about their little 
comforts, and feel aggrieved by the most trifling 
temporary deficiency. The water-drinkers at Strath- 
peffer, flocked over to witness the splendour of Castle 
Leod, now that it was once more the residence of an 
earl ; and his lordship frequently amused himself, by 
accompanying in person a party of lions from one 
empty room to another, opening the doors with per- 
fect gravity, as if he thought them all in the highest 
state of perfection, while the strangers were in a 
most comical state of perplexity what to say, or 
how to put a polite face on their astonishment. 

A gentleman visiting at one of our principal 
Highland residences some time since, personated the 



FALLS OF ROGIE. 273 

buller for a frolic, and conducted a party of strangers 
round the house and pictures, telling all sorts of absui'd 
stories and traditions composed extempore; at length 
he concluded this rather unfair jest, by throwing open 
a door leading into the luncheon room, and taking his 
seat at table, leaving the unfortunate " lions" planted 
at the door, while he exclaimed with a laugh, "here 

are Lord and Lady , the present proprietors!" 

This morning we drove to the Falls of Rogie, 
reckoned so like those of Tivoli, that we need 
scarcely now go to Italy. After a few dry days, 
the cascade was so low, I might almost have count- 
ed the drops ; but the surrounding scenery is charm- 
ing, and a light rustic bridge, crossing over the very 
face of the fall, has a striking effect. From thence 
we proceeded to one of the most lovely bits of lake 
sceneiy that can by possibility be conceived. A 
gentleman in the neighbourhood, when surprised 
once by the re-appearance of an English friend, who 
had been in the West Indies for sixteen years, asked 
what had brought him to Scotland again, to which 
the stranger replied, " What but to see Loch Achilty 
once again !" I only wonder he could remain 
away so long ! The lake is quite a little natural 
curiosity, of luxuriance and beauty, as blue and still 
as a piece of porcelain china, encircled by a ring of 
mountains which are clothed to their summits in 
birch and fir, while every wooded hill thrusts a 
long elbow into the water. High bare scalps of rock 
24 



274 DINGWALL. 

are visible here and there, hke great uncultivated sav- 
ages peeping over into civilized life, and in the most 
romantic spot of all this lovely scene stands a cottage ! 
such a cottage ! ! — build one according to your most 
romantic fancy anywhere, and the situation can never 
be excelled ! " I saw it but a moment, and methinks 
I see it yet !" 

A bishop of Ossory once remarked, that Ding- 
wall, to which -we next proceeded, greatly resembles 
Jerusalem, and pointed out a hill, the exact coun- 
terpart of Mount Calvary. In this neighbourhood 
are some enchanting drives, particularly in the di- 
rection of Tulloch Castle, an elegant residence, 
magnificently situated amidst a forest of trees, above 
the Cromarty Frith. Some miles beyond we saw No- 
var, a modern house in the Grecian style, surrounded 
by a wide unbroken expanse of magnificent wood, and 
where a fine collection of foreign pictures is most 
liberally shown to the public, though, unfortunately, 
we did not hear of this Highland Louvre or Vatican 
till too late. Fowhs, belonging to Sir Hector 
Monro, is said to contain as many windows as there 
are days in the year, though I observed only enough 
to make a month. This place has been deserted ever 
since the calamitous death of Lady Monro, drowned 
along with her maid when bathing some years ago. 
Their cries for help were distinctly heard, but the 
servants had been so strictly prohibited from passing 
in that direction, that none had the presence of mind 



INVERGORDON. 275 

to venture until too late. A lawsuit is now in process, 
whether the present proprietor's only daughter, or the 
heir-male to a dynasty of eight centuries, shall inherit 
this "very desirable tenement," which is well worth 
contesting. The trees might be a fortune in them- 
selves, and it is said the lives of those that remain de- 
pend upon the issue of this plea, as the law did not en- 
tail them on the heir male, and many of these forest 
chiefs have already fallen victims to the axe. 

At Invergordon is a fine pier, protected by two 
curious abrupt points of land, called the Souters of 
Cromarty, which throw themselves out from oppo- 
site sides of the bay, like serpents, with their heads 
almost meeting. Their proximity would remind 
you of the Scottish battle-cry, " Shouther to shou- 
ther." This forms a land-locked basin, where the 
whole navy of Great Britain might ride out a sweep- 
ing blast from the Avildest wind in the compass. 

Tarbet House, the modern residence of Mrs. 
Hay Mackenzie, has nothing in its appearance to 
make a song about. Though externally gay and 
attractive, with an appearance of common-place 
modern comfort, it is unfit to hold a candle to Cas- 
tle Leod. The finest residence in this neighbour- 
hood is not in the habit of being shown, but we got 
a glimpse of Balnagown, belonging to Sir Charles 
Ross, with a modern addition a la Gillespie, not yet 
finished inside, but the abbey-like appearance of which 
is a curious contrast to the old Scotch castle, looking as 



276 BALNAGOWN. 

if it had once belonged to the army, and had now taken 
orders. It stands in a noble park, and commands a 
wide expanse of the Cromarty Frith. Here you have 

room to breathe, and we stood on A 's favourite 

position for taking a bird's-eye view, — the top of the 
house, — whence we admired a fine comprehensive 
landscape of wood, water, and hills, tastefully scatter- 
ed, and showing each other off to the best advantage. 
Several of the family pictures at Balnagown are 
very interesting. One which attracted much of our 
attention, represented Sir William Gordon taking- 
leave of his wife and seven children, previous to go- 
ing abroad, the whole party being drowned in tears ! 
An odd moment to choose for sitting, and certainly 
not a happy one ! Matthews used to exhibit seven 
different ways of laughing, and here may be seen 
as many styles of weeping ! One of the young la- 
dies, who was evidently handsome, afterwards be- 
came Countess of Cromarty. A very striking picture 
is here, by Sir Peter Lely, representing the Duke of 
Monmouth as a boy, with his mother, the celebrated 
Lucy Waters, quite worthy of her reputation for 
beauty. We admired much "the bonny Earl of 
Moray," reckoned the greatest Adonis in his day, 
who looks as if he thought himself so. His last 
words, when he was slain among the rocks at Doni- 
bristle, by Lord Huntley, are a curious record of 
personal vanity strong even in death, " You have 
spoiled a better face than your own !" 



TAIN. 277 

Next in the galleiy hangs a faded but pleasing 
portrait, by Sir Joshua Reynolds, of Sir John Lock- 
hart Ross, who began life as a fifth son, and suc- 
ceeded eventually to the estate, which you will call 
" a melancholy piece of good fortune." We ad- 
mired extremely a full length portrait of Mrs. Lewis 
Mackenzie, by Raeburn, though, like most of his 
pictures, the very dark heavy shadows he has thrown 
over the eyes, perfectly burying them in shade, give 
a weeping melancholy expression to the counte- 
nance, and the draperies cling as if they were wet. 
Sir Henry Raeburn is said to have been the only boy 
educated at Heriot's Hospital who ever afterwards 
distinguished himself. We observed a grotesque old 
chimney-piece at Balnagown, with the family arms, 
modelled in coloured stucco, besides initials and va- 
rious zoological devices, like those carried about by 
the image boys in London. The date was 1670. 

Near Tain we remarked some of the best agri- 
culture in Scotland, and were told that Mr. Ross 
Rose, a great proprietor here, had taken his whole 
e^itate into his own hands, and after improving the 
farms to their utmost capability, is now letting them 
at an augmented rent to the best tenants. I saw so 
many ploughs going in one field, that the effect was 
like a ploughing match, but his farming establish- 
ment is now reduced to only forty pairs of horses ! 
Every field for several miles is trimmed round with 
luxuriant hedges of thorn and beech, clipped and 
24* 



278 TAIN. 

dressed as if they belonged to a garden, and the 
road is overhung with laburnums and other flowering" 
shrubs, instead of the " stone hedges," Dr. Johnson 
complains of, which some proprietors prefer, because 
they take less room and no nourishment. 

When the Highlanders first observed the march 
of civil government into their own wild fastnesses, 
an expression of angry consternation became gen- 
eral, " the law has got to Tain!" but it might have 
reminded them of old times, to have seen the Goth- 
ic Church there, v.'hich was forsaken for a barn-like 
edifice of larger dimensions. The state of this ven- 
erable building at present is perfectly unique. The 
roof is entire, but a scene of desolation reigns with- 
in, quite beyond description — and you would imag- 
ine that some drunken brawl, or 0. P. riot had taken 
place there before it was deserted. Pews are torn 
up by the roots and scattered in fragments on the 
aisles, galleries hanging in splinters, the curtains in 
tatters, the windows broken and partly built up, the 
tombs defaced, the pulpit stair a mere wreck, and the 
sacred desk itself tottering towards the ground. You 
might fancy that a destructive army of soldiers had 
laid it waste not an hour ago, but this has been its 
situation these many years, for the whole place is 
encrusted with dust and festooned with cobwebs. 
We were quite scandalized to see this venerable 
church in so disreputable a condition. There are 
traces yet remaining, however, of departed magnifi- 



TALN. 279 

cence. The principal pew, with pillars on each side 
and a canopy above, is of carved oak, gilded like 
the frame of a mirror. The galleries have once 
been painted inbrilhant colours, representing badges 
of all the different trades at Tain, wheat-sheaves 
for the bakers, and scissors for the tailors, which 
w'ere necessary hieroglyphics in old times for those 
who could neither read nor write. The only objects 
we saw not in this pitiable state of decay, were a 
large black velvet pall, which lay in a heap at one 
corner of the church, and two modern white mar- 
ble tombs, the first commemorating the old clergy- 
man who last preached from this forsaken pulpit, 
and the other in memory of Mrs. Ross Rose, who, 
at the early age of twenty-seven, suddenly dropped 
down dead, when preparing medicines for a sick and 
indigent family. A marble figure is sculptured on 
one side of the tablet in an attitude of meditation, 
and a kneeling child opposite, while underneath we 
observed an inscription, expressing all that grief 
could dictate, to attract the sympathy and respect 
of strangers. On the external wall of this church 
are some curious old coats-of-arms and images, 
nearly obliterated with age ; but one of the effigies 
had lately a most amusing adventure, as a worthy- 
magistrate at Tain thought it a good plan for im- 
mortalizing his own physiognomy, to have this old 
saint metamorphosed into a likeness of himself, and 
accortlingly Bailie Ross called in a sculptor and 



280 TAIN. 

caused his own magisterial features to be duly 
copied for the occasion. Unfortunately, after the 
transformation was accomplished, and the city of 
Tain had been entertained for years with admiring 
this modern antique, it one day fell prostrate, break- 
ing through the arch of a burial vault, and when 
we looked down, amidst crumbhng coffins and 
human bones there lay the broken image of the 
aspiring Bailie Ross, whom I shall certainly make a 
point of never forgetting. The good people of 
Tain behave rather unhandsomely to the dead, hav- 
ing no scruple apparently in elbowing them out of 
their own tomb-stones. I found here an ancient 
tablet, where, instead of refreshing the original 
name and date, as Old Mortality did, one half of the 
inscription has been allowed to remain, setting forth 
the virtues of an individual deceased a hundred 
years since, but his own designation was erased, and 
the stone chiselled an inch deep, with the name of 
a Mrs. Janet Monro, wife of Alexander Monro of 
Tain, who died in 1839. The good lady may have 
been tolerably honest during her life, but this is the 
only instance I know of a posthumous theft. It 
might positively be actionable, if either plaintiff or 
defendant could be summoned into court. 

Our progress from Tain was delayed, owing to 
all the horses having been bespoke for the funeral 
of a respectable old lady, going thirty-five miles off, 
and after breakfast our landlady burst into the room 



TAIN. 2S1 

witli intelligence, that she had secured a window 
for me, to see the procession ! I did not expect 
much, but the w^orthy landlady favoured me wuth 
her own society and remarks on the occasion, which 
gave the affair a perfectly new aspect. The idea of 
all her own post-horses being in requisition at once, 
excited her most reverential admiration, besides 
which we counted eight gigs, one post-chaise, two 
Irish cars, one phaeton, the hearse, and several per- 
sons on horseback ! No higher pitch of human 
grandeur at Tain could be reached ! From the im- 
mediate subject of her thoughts, our landlady's con- 
versation digressed to the recent death of the 
Duchess-Countess of Sutherland, when she spoke in 
raptures of admiration respecting a most beautiful ad- 
dress of condolence from the Scottish corporation in 
London, to the Duke, which appeared that morning 
in the Inverness Courier, adding, that she had locked 
it up, thinking if ever her sons were writing to friends 
in distress, they could not do better than copy it out ! 
We plodded on very comfortably for some time 
after leaving Tain, and trotted leisurely down hill 
towards a bridge, near one side of which, in a flat 
cultivated field, lay an enormous black whin stone, 
about fifty feet round. It looked like a prodigious 
haggis or some huge ungainly animal prostrate 
beside the highway ; but w'hatever our horse mistook 
it foi-, he suddenly sprung aside, threw his fore-feet 
over the opposite parapet, and struggled violently 



282 TAIN. 

to leap over. I have a confused recollection of 
tearing clown the apron, and springing beyond the 

carriage-wheel to the ground. A did the same, 

and when we looked round an instant afterwards, 
the carriage and horse had entirely vanished. I 
felt for a moment as if the roof of my head had 
flown off! Havins: at lens^th summoned courage 
to take a glance over the parapet, and ascertain 
the worst, I saw our vehicle lying upside down on 
a bank beneath, and our traitor of a horse strug- 
gling in the shafts, while a crowd of women, who had 
assembled so rapidly, they seemed to have grown 
out of the ground, were using their utmost efforts 

to assist A in righting the whole equipage. 

Meantime I sat down to recover from the shock of 
my impromptu descent, while a venerable grey haired 
man, like a missionaiy, came up to me, making many 
suitable reflections. No one canimaginehow much 
real kindness and sympathy there are in the world till 
they be needed, and with my senses perfectly scat- 
tered by the adventure, it seemed quite providential 
that a person so able and willing to direct my thoughts 
in an appropriate channel, should be on the spot. 
Before we had time to fix on any plan for proceed - 
ing towards Dornoch, a gig drove up, the proprietor 
of which stopped on observing the disabled state of our 
equipage, and obligingly offered us the use of his own. 
Gigs were by no means in fashion with me now, but 
our new friend was so persevering in his oflfers of ser- 



TAIN. 283 

vice, that it ended in A walking to the ferry, two 

miles off, and the stranger's driving me there, though 
I could not but commiserate my own case, in being 
obliged to trust to any four-legged animal again. 

Some days afterwards A transmitted an ac- 
count of our accident to the Provost of Tain, suggest- 
ing that the great stone should be tried by a Court 
Martial and broke, as the lives of Her Majesty's 
lieges were endangered by so formidable looking an 
object near the highroad; but an answer arrived 
by return of post, stating, that the said stone was a 
great geological curiosity, a special favourite with 
scientific men, and that sixty years ago our corres- 
pondent's own mother had nearly been killed by 
her horse taking fright on the same spot, but he 
could then obtain no redress. A suggestion was 
made, at that time, to cut up this wonderful phe- 
nomenon into mile-stones, but the town of Tain 
rose in arms against so flagrant a proposition; and, 
in short, every traveller's bones may be broken 
rather than this illustrious rock, — but it would be 
desirable that the horses in that neighbourhood 
should learn better notions of geology. 

If you are fond of our Scotch dish, " hotch- 
potch," my lettei-s may often bring it to your mind, 
and the phrenological world would see more " casu- 
alty" than " concentrativeness" in these new " Lights 
and Shadows of Scottish Life." At book-clubs 
now, to judge from the works we see most in de- 



284 TAIN. 

in and, nothing appears to excite so much general 
interest at present, as the hfe and adventures of 
highwaymen, the more daring and atrocious the 
better; but I hope you will be satisfied, in this long 
web of a letter, to read a few highway incidents, 
though not seasoned, unluckily, with anything in 
the robbery and murder line. I thought, when paper 
currency ceased in England, and we were all obliged 
to carry gold on our travels, that the race of Turpins 
and Jack Sheppards would have revived ; and now 
that the days of knight-errantry are restored in the 
higher circles, perhaps the lower orders, in reading 
the spirited descriptions of times gone by, may be 
fired with emulation to imitate those heroes of the 
road, who are so eloquently held up as objects of in- 
terest and admiration to all classes. Such works seem 
on the whole, mere lessons of depravity, especially as 
the pill is gilded with a great deal of wit and humour. 
Now that we are about to visit some friends in 
the neighbourhood, I must draw my lucubrations to 
a close, that the letter-carrier may " stand and deli- 
ver" at your door in due time. Perhaps you may 
give a hit at my loquaciousness, as Sydney Smith 
did once to a certain young lady, who had become 
very fluent on the subject of an author's drollery and 
humour, remarking, that his book was filled with 
flashes of wit, when he looked sternly at his talka- 
tive companion, saying, " I sometimes prefer flashes 
of silence." 

THE END. 



INDEX 



Aird Lamont, 

Appin, 

Aragower, 

Ardvoiser Bay, 

Arisaig. 

Argyle, Duke of, 

Argyleshire, 

Cottages of, 

Armidale Castle, Portraits at, 

„ First Lord of the Isles 
„ Sir James Macdonald, 

Arran Mountains, 

Auchnacarry, 

Balmacarra, 

Balnagown, 

Barmore, 

Beauly Priory, 

Benavie, 

Ben Cruachan, 

Ben Nevis, 

Brahan Castle, 

Portraits at, 

,, Lord Seaforth, 
,, Lady Seafonh, 
„ George the Third, 
„ Cardinal Richlieu, 
„ Duchess of Cleveland, 

Broadford, 

Bute, . 

Kyles of, 

Caledonian Canal, 

Camerons of Lochiel, 

Campbells, 

Castle Leod, 

Cave in Island of Eigg, 

Cawdor Castle, 

King Duncan's room where murdered. 
Lord Lovat's concealment, 

Chisholm. The 
Grave of, . 

25 



Page 

50 
109 
114 
161 
156 
63-71 
117 

86 
162 
163 
164 

50 
142 
200 
275 

53 
257 
152 

79 
110 
260 

261 
261 
261 
261 
261 
J69 
41 
43 
137 
139 
51 
271 
185 
234 
237 
239 
244 
216 



344 



INDEX. 



Page 



Chieftain of Macintosh, 

Chieftain of Locheil, 

Christian profession 

Clans, 

Coran Ferry, 

Coruisk, 

Coul, 

Dalmaily, 

Dark Mile, 

Deep Well, 

Dingwall, 

Doc h four, 

Druid's Stone, 

Drumnadrochit, 

Dunolly Castle, 

Dunstaffnage Castle, 

English Clergyman's Cotta 

Erchless Castle, 

Fall of Foyers, 

Palls of Rogie, 

Fort William, 

Gaelic, 

Glencoe, 

Qlenfinnan, 

Glengarry, 

Glen Shell, 

Glen Urquhart, 

Gordon of Cluny, 

Highland Proprietors, 

Tenantry, 

Attachment of ditto, 

Lairds, . 

Forests, . 
Invergordon, 
Inverary, approach to. 

Inn, 

Town-crier of, 

Castle of 

Entrance Hall of, 

Castle, Portraits 

,, Miss Bellenden, 
,, Miss Gunning, 
,, Dake of Argyll, 
, , Ma rquis of A rgy 1 1 , 
,, Mrs. Gunning, 
,, Lady Charlotte Bury, 
„ Duke of Hamilton, 
Invermorriston, .... 



INDEX. 



345 



Invcrlochy Castle, 








131 


Inverness, 








230 


Inverniel, 


. 






53 


Isle of Sky, . 








159 


Hospitality of, 






192 


Food of, 








194 


Waste land of, 






195 


Cottages of, 








196 


Kean's Cottage, 








37 


Kilchurn Castle, 








82 


Killichrist Church, 








259 


Kilravock, 








243 


Loch Awe, 








81-89 


Loch Arcaig, 








144 


Loch Fyne, 








52 


Loch Linhe, 








104 


Loch Scavaip, 








186 


Loch Ness, 








220-229 


Lochalsh, 








198 


elegant Yacht at. 






207 


Lochiel, 








145 


Lord Cranslonn's Cottage, 






157 


Maclean, 








106 


Macdonald, 


. 






166 


Macgregors, . 








88 


M'Innes, 








170 


M'Miilan's Cottage 








189 


Macraes, 








211 


Monastery of Inishail, 






81 


Mount Stewart, 








16 


Approach to, - 




17 


House of, 




18 


Entrance Hall of, 




18 


Gardens of. 




28 


Walks of, 


34 


Portraits at, 




)i 


Duchess of Lauderdal 


e, . 21 




Lord Bute, 


22 




Duchess of Orleans, 


23 


ji 


Rubens, 


23 


I) 


Lady Jane Douglas, 


23 




Countess of Percy, 


24 


jj 


Countess of Lonsdale, 


24 


J, 


Countess of Macarlne 


24 


,1 


Lady M. W. Montagi 


1, . 25 


,, 


Lady M. Menzies, 


26 


,j 


Duchess of Clueensbu 


ry, . 27 


Muckairn, 


, 






91 



346 



INDEX. 









Page 


Opium Eating, . . . ... 30 


Officer's Cottage, 






48 


Ossian's Cave, 






126 


Penimore, 






56 


Poor Beggar, 






227 


Popish Chapel, 






130 


Prince Charles, 






139 


Prince Charles's Cave, 






183 


Ratachan, 






211 


Roman Catholic Priest, 






253 


Rothesay, 






9 


Air of. 






11 


Bay of. 






11 


View from Inn of, 






12 


Castle, 






13 


County Jail of. 






15 


"Villa near. 






39 


Sailing Vessel, 






160 


Scavaig and Coruisk, 






178 


Scotticisms, • 






87 


Sir Alan Cameron, 






138 


South Hall, 






45 


Strath, .... 






172 


Strathaird's Cave, 






181 


Strathglass, 






245 


Swiss and German Cottages, 






19 


Strathpeffer, 






266 


Invalids at. 






268 


French abigail at. 






270 


Tain, 






277 


Gothic Church at, 






278 


Bailie Ross at, 






279 


Funeral at. 






280 


Whin stone at, . 






281 


Accident at. 






282 


Temple Newsome, . 






19 


Upper servants. 






265 


Urquhart Castle, 






222 


Veto law, 






93 



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